Rogue Galaxy: What I Think Thus Far.

[Calantus]

Nah you can buy converters for it (as well as a power adaptor because you guys use different plugs apparently), and many of the newer TVs here support NTSC natively I believe.

I'd be willing to go through somebody for games because if they don't get to me I can take the loss without having a fit. Not so for the price of a PS3 (and I'm not talking about honesty even, it could just get lost in the post). :P

[Riggswolfe]

Well, I bought it and played it. I haven't tried the insectron thing yet. I have no idea where a good place to put the bug cages is so I'm holding off. I'm on the planet right after the jungle planet. Zerard I think. I love the game, and so far only have 2 beefs:

1) Linear. So far the game is very, very linear. Fight, cutscene to advance the plot, more fighting.
2) WTF is up with the difficulty? Some fights I finish in <10 seconds without breaking a sweat, other fights use almost every potion I have and I barely win.

[stray]

Yeah, the difficulty is weird. But at least it's difficult at all, if somewhat spotty ;). Bosses can definitely be a bitch.

Though I did unlock Desert Wind lvl 2 by the time I got to the Prison. Minions go down like flies (it's like a 1300 AoE [edit] I think? ... All I know is that it one shots everything on screen, including the spiders). You just have to waste a lot of AP to do it.

Couldn't tell you about Insectron yet. I dropped a trap right where that little kid gave one to me. It picked up a little pincher beetle. I'll be sending him off to battle soon. Lol.

[stray]

Now I'm really tempted to get the strat guide for the factory....But I don't want ruin it for myself. It's kind of fun.

[schild]

Heh. The strat guide has a layout in it that involves minimum work later. The 7 pages that cover the factory and the location of a few super ridiculously hidden chests make it worth the price of admission.

Edit: Oh, and if you don't get a certain key at a bar the first time through Myna, you can get it again later. So, if you miss something (I never look at walkthroughs until after I've actually done an area), it seems the game just punishes you for a few hours for not totally exploring.

[Riggswolfe]

Yeah, the difficulty is weird. But at least it's difficult at all, if somewhat spotty ;). Bosses can definitely be a bitch.

Though I did unlock Desert Wind lvl 2 by the time I got to the Prison. Minions go down like flies (it's like a 1300 AoE [edit] I think? ... All I know is that it one shots everything on screen, including the spiders). You just have to waste a lot of AP to do it.

I have that skill too. I suppose I'll be using it. What seems to kick my parties ass is fights that have 2-3 of those rolling beetle/aardvark looking monsters. I'm also wondering if this is a game I should be spending time doing nothing but leveling in. My hero is level um...17 I think in the prison, I'm not sure if that is enough.

[Yegolev]

One hour and twenty-something minutes in.  It's nice.  Good art, better than halfass voiceover.  Glad to see the Dark Cloud 2 item icon style again, and of course the item design.  It's fancy but not so chibi as Dark Cloud 2, and I like fancy when done right.  I have not gotten to the first boss due to fucking around trying to figure out the spawn mechanism so I can fight some more of those cactus things... for the hunter points, of course.  All this collecting makes me happy in my pants.

I have figured out at this point (just by reading the manual, no less) that the insects are exactly like the fish in DC2.  My wife has already done a Homer-Simpsonesque "There'd better not be any fishing in this game... because if there IS...!", so I think I can get a nice chuckle out of this one.

The art, I have to mention this specifically, is - and I mean it this time - cel shading done right.  I know I have said that before about some game that I can't remember, but I was a filthy liar.

The combat.  I like turn-based, but this is what the kids are playing these days.  It is at least not terrible like the combat in Star Ocean 3 or Tales of Symphonia; specifically, my allies don't act like delirious mongoloids... so far.

No widescreen or progressive-scan options.  Double-you tee eff.  This is two double-aught seven, unclefuckers, where's the damned prog-scan?  Or 16:9!  Is 16:9 so hard?

Reminds me of Star Wars for some reason.  Or Trigun.  Maybe it's more like the guy from Fire Emblem but blond with H.E.L.P.E.R. and the fat guy from DQVIII in his party, I don't know.  At least it's not Toriyama.  I either need more or less wine.

[Riggswolfe]

Alright, I bought the strat guide (something I never do these days, I go to gamefaqs instead.) I may need it for this flippin' factory. Nothing like getting completely lost in a big ass dungeon to make you start eyeing a strat guide. I haven't used it yet other than looking up some weapon combos out of curiousity and reading about each characters strengths and weaknesses. I may break down and use it for this effing factory though. Seriously.

Oh, and I hate mimics. With a purple passion.

Thanks for mentioning Desert Wind 2 Stray. I had it but wasn't using it much. I have this weird "save my magic for bosses/extremely hard fights" type of mental block in alot of JRPGs I need to get past.

[schild]

Fights become trivial if you unlock Earthshaker and Supernova in Chapter 7/8 (the last level of the desert sword for Jaster and one of his abilities).

[ahoythematey]

No widescreen?

Upsetting is an understatement.

[schild]

Heh, I've been playing it at 752x480 and haven't really noticed. To confirm there's no widescreen, reboot once holding down square, an option might pop up. Do the same if it doesn't, holding down circle.

[Yegolev]

Those keypresses don't do anything for me; I did not try it in the PS2 but it's not important enough for that.  It's not really a big deal that my circles look like ovals either.  I'm used to it, but in 2007 it nevertheless becomes a point-subtraction even for a PS2 game.  Maybe they did it for some sort of combat reason, thinking people would be irritated if widescreen-owners could see more of the battlefield.  Also, if either widescreen or prog-scan was enableable via arcane button combos rather than a menu option, and not mentioned on the box, that would garner another set of subtractions for unnecessary asshattery.

Just to restate, I think this game is totally awesome.

[Riggswolfe]

Fights become trivial if you unlock Earthshaker and Supernova in Chapter 7/8 (the last level of the desert sword for Jaster and one of his abilities).

I'm on the boss fight for Chapter 6 right now. I have Desert Seeker III I think it is called for the swords. I seem to be a bit behind on my unlocking since I'm not at Supernova yet.

[schild]

My Vanguard thread started with a panel and less than a sentence is more popular than this one.

I'd like to suggest that many of us might fail as gamers. Yea, I went there.

-

At the end of the game.

IF the dungeons were just one hour shorter a piece, this game would be above FF6 on my top RPG list.

Seriously.

I swoon.

[stray]

I'd like to suggest that many of us might fail as gamers. Yea, I went there.

Many of "them", you mean. Not "us".

Yeah, I went there ;)


Anyways, I took a small break from it the last few days (will probably finish the main storyline soon though), but yeah I think it's pretty damn good. Kind of a best of both worlds thing.....Though I'd prefer a more modern, fully loaded rpg world (i.e. no random encounters). Coupled with this sort of combat system, it'd be great.

Not only that, but I want more of the wandering about and encounters to be scripted (even minion encounters). I don't want to fight things just because "they're in the way". I want even the smallest battles to feel at least slightly tied to the narrative.

If that demo video is any indication, perhaps White Knight Story may be just that.

[Signe]

I haven't bought it yet.  But I will.  SOON.

[schild]

Finished it.

Pretty much awesome. Clocked in at like 40hrs and 1 minute.

[Riggswolfe]

I'm in Chapter 8 and just got Supernova. I like it, though I don't like using Mr Eyepatch. I tend not to use characters I know are backstabbing me. I do like using Lilika and Kisala in the same party with that dancing combo attack they have.

[schild]

Finished bonus content and such.

40 bucks, 50 hours. Not bad.

In fact, DAMN FINE.

[Yegolev]

Since I'm at 12+ hours and my three are at lv24, and I'm just now running around the jungle at night in Chapter 3, I will probably end up with a bit more than 50 hours played before it's all wrapped up.

[Riggswolfe]

Sounds like you're doing alot of the sidequests to me.

[Phildo]

Doing EVERYTHING (Frog Log, Insector, monster hunts) probably takes closer to 60 or 70 hours.  That's a lot of grinding to literally complete the game.

[Rasix]

Just bought it.  Liking it a lot so far, except that I haven't really gotten the hang of the combat yet.  IE, I get jacked up quite a bit and have to potion a lot.   

First boss fight was rather easy though.    Perfect pacing for the first "tutorial" part of the game; clocked in at just under an hour.

Very stylish.  Great voice acting.  I can see myself enjoying this game quite a bit.

[schild]

Doing EVERYTHING (Frog Log, Insector, monster hunts) probably takes closer to 60 or 70 hours.  That's a lot of grinding to literally complete the game.

Monster hunts, if you do them at chapter 12, take 2 hours for ALL of them if you have the items. Insector would probably be 30-40 hours and is completely unnecessary (takes an hour + of wandering away from the little thingy to get some of them).

[stray]

Insector is a cool idea, but for a minigame, they've cockblocked it a bit too much. Setting trap, wandering away...Plus, you can't even compete unless you have several insects to begin with.

[Phildo]

When I say monster hunts, I mean killing 30 or so of everything.  And with Insector, the idea is that you drop the trap near a save point and complete the dungeon.  While you're doing that, eventually you catch some bugs and can level them up while you're finishing the dungeon.  If you take care of things during the course of the regular game, you can have some pretty good insectors before you know it.

[Yegolev]

I guess if you call that stuff sidequests, then yes.  The actual combat is surprisingly tolerable, even when I have two SMT, FFXII and Okami in the rotation.  The minigame that I am spending the most time with is leveling up weapons.  I was railroaded off of Juraika and that sort of dampened the weaponry thing a bit since I was forced to switch up to the good equipment by the horrible fauna in the prison.  Now I'm thinking I might want to advance a bit more with the idea that I will eventually be able to revisit areas and can resume my minigame.

[Azazel]

Nah you can buy converters for it (as well as a power adaptor because you guys use different plugs apparently), and many of the newer TVs here support NTSC natively I believe.

I'd be willing to go through somebody for games because if they don't get to me I can take the loss without having a fit. Not so for the price of a PS3 (and I'm not talking about honesty even, it could just get lost in the post). :P

Get your PS2 chipped, then the games are cake. Any decent TV from the last decade or so will support NTSC and PAL60hz, so that should really be a non-issue. Then there's plenty of sources for the games, even eBay sellers as many of them are US-based game stores.

[Kitsune]

This game seriously needs a damn manual.  The leaflet they stuck in the box leaves giant swaths of the game untouched, fails to explain giant piles of kinda important information, and the in-game help info isn't any better.  I hate it when the strategy guide doubles as a $20 instruction manual.

[schild]

I thought the in-game help was pretty amazing all things considered. They had pictures. Pictures! Generally though, it's best to get the strategy guide if it's made by Double Jump. Not because the manual will suck but because Double Jump making a guide means that the game has more shit in it than can fit in just a manual.

[Yegolev]

I suppose that there are two major possibilities here.  A: I managed to figure most of it out without a guide, or 2: I only think I know what is going on and am missing out on things.

[Kitsune]

Well, for example: I have no idea what the elemental stats on a weapon do.  When a battle ends, sometimes it says 'Player Bonus!' on the reward screen, I don't know what that means or how to accomplish it.  I know zilch about the insect fighting.  I'm fine with the factory stuff, but I've always been decent with numbers and know a lot of people just can't seem to grasp how it works.  I can't find where I turn in the hunter tokens for rewards; the help text said the Galaxy Corporation but nobody there mentioned anything about it.

Details like that, utterly absent from being mentioned in the manual.

[stray]

Well, for example: I have no idea what the elemental stats on a weapon do.  When a battle ends, sometimes it says 'Player Bonus!' on the reward screen, I don't know what that means or how to accomplish it.  I know zilch about the insect fighting.  I'm fine with the factory stuff, but I've always been decent with numbers and know a lot of people just can't seem to grasp how it works.  I can't find where I turn in the hunter tokens for rewards; the help text said the Galaxy Corporation but nobody there mentioned anything about it.

Details like that, utterly absent from being mentioned in the manual.

Turn in the hunter stuff to MIO.

[Yegolev]

I am still stuck in the prison, and I had assumed some things will be revealed as I go; experience has shown this to be true.  Recent trends in game design are to have complex games revealed gradually, so I have a relaxed attitude toward hunter coins, for example.  This was how things worked in Dark Cloud 2, with new game mechanics being introduced well past the beginning areas.

As for the elemental bars, I figured out how to increase them pretty easily.  I don't know what they do for a fact, but I assume that they key into elemental damage types, and of course more is better.  I seem to get better results from MASTERED weapons when combining, but so far the basic power number seems to be the one to pay attention to.  Of course, I don't have any way to determine a monster's elemental weakness, and I am only assuming that they have them.

The Insectron doesn't seem terribly complicated, but I've only played one match with five insectors that I forgot to feed beforehand.