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Post by toei on Feb 1, 2022 22:38:30 GMT -5
Ex Side-scrollers are one of my favorite genres, and I love sword-based combat... Dragon Valor just has very basic and samey level design, that's all. It's not bad, but it goes on for way too long for what it is. I wouldn't be surprised if Xeo liked it after an hour; I'd be surprised if he still did after 6 or 7.
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Post by Ex on Feb 1, 2022 22:58:53 GMT -5
Considering the game's brevity, I'd be surprised if he was still playing it after 7 hours. Dragon Valor sits at 7 hours on HLTB for the main campaign. Xeogred speed means it should take him 5 hours to finish it.
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Post by Sarge on Feb 2, 2022 0:59:10 GMT -5
I liked Dragon Valor well enough. Not amazing, but solid. It really is just a long RPG-lite brawler.
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Post by toei on Feb 4, 2022 0:00:45 GMT -5
Gonna move my FF8 talk here cause that's the thread I meant to post in anyway. I'm about 2 hours into the game now. I like to play my RPGs leisurely, going out of my way to talk to people and reading up all the exposition, so I've only just entered the communications tower. I'd keep going, but it's midnight and I've been tired all week, so I'll just go to bed.
I'm fine with the battle system so far. It'll really depend on what the dungeons are like. I already know I won't be Drawing more than I have to. I'm never the one to level grind, either, or go out of my way to break the system to my advantage. I want to experience the game's world and story first and foremost, and becoming overpowered just makes the gameplay worse.
In any case, first impressions are positive. It's funny how everything is so different from SNES FF... except the music. Uematsu is Uematsu.
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Post by Ex on Feb 4, 2022 10:40:38 GMT -5
I'm fine with the battle system so far. I think how drawn out you want the Draw mechanic depends on the player in ways. enemies level up with you, because they likely don't scale quite as quickly even with additional levels I remember now why I never got around to playing FF8 back in ye days: The plot is a love story. Magic requires grinding spells out of enemies. Enemies scale with you.On paper that all sounds bad, but perhaps in execution it's not. I do remember someone telling me that enemies scale in tiers. Meaning you can level over them and have an advantage for a while, until you reach a level tier, and then the enemies "bump up" their level again. I am never a fan of enemy scaling, because it usually makes the process of leveling up feel pointless. Also it seems like a way to just increase the length of the game time (battles take longer against evenly matched enemies). However I am a fan of scaling bosses, so that players can't just over-level themselves to defeat a hard boss. They are instead forced to rely on tactics or at least clever exploits, not sheer numerical advantage. I'm hoping with FF8 the designers just wanted to encourage players to play leisurely and not focus on level-grinding, and that's why they made the enemies scale. I still don't get what the point of "drawing out spells" from enemies was. Unless it's a way of ensuring that players can't get certain spells, until the designers wanted the players to have those spells, at by that point in the game (when the required enemy appears). As opposed to just grinding your mages' levels to unlock powerful spells early in the game, and then make the rest of the game a cakewalk as a result. Not that FF games are difficult in the first place. From what I've read (not played) the only legit difficult FF games are FF3 NES and FF4 DS. All the FF games I've personally beaten were jokes in the difficulty department.
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Post by toei on Feb 4, 2022 11:30:43 GMT -5
Drawing doesn't seem as bad as you probably imagine, at least so far. Each enemy type has a few spells - you decide which you want to draw, and then you get a random amount of that spell. It's not rare to get 7-8 of the spell in one draw, for example, which means that character can then use the spell 7-8 times. You can also trade magic between party members, so it's not like everyone has to draw, and you can also have them draw to cast right away rather than stock. It eliminates the need for MP, and it opens up possibilities. It's not super grindy unless you feel the need to get the maximum amount of anything, which you do not need.
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Post by Xeogred on Feb 4, 2022 16:48:12 GMT -5
I'm being a little nitpicky for sure. So maybe you won't mind some of the experimentation Ex , as toei seems fine with things so far. I should have mentioned that yeah, you can often get ~7-8 draws in one go, so it doesn't take as long as it might have sounded to hit 99 (is it 100? I know FF8 randomly switched to that being a cap for some stats lol). When enemies level up to a new tier, they start having higher level magic you can draw too. So it's kind of a nice give and take. But again, if toei keeps going I bet he'll have an even easier time through this than I did when I power leveled and stuff. I wonder how Squall holds up. Pretty much another Cloud in ways, I kind of forgot how much he evolves later on. I like a lot of FF8's characters though. Looking forward to when toei gets to some Laguna stuff.
It's weird how the game kind of opens up with this teacher / student love scenario with Quistis though... guess she's maybe a few years older than Squall. But then she gets sidelined for the Tifa knockoff. I HATE Rinoa. Going off my memory at least...
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Post by toei on Feb 4, 2022 23:12:25 GMT -5
I really, really hated that dumb-ass mechanical spider chasing you right after the first boss battle. Actually, that whole thing was typical of Square, always doing too much. You fight these two guys for a while, the real boss comes up midbattle, then you beat it and you're forced into another boss battle with a garbage ass flee-and-fight-over-and-over gimmick. You end up having to fight that stupid thing 5 or 6 times. And this is just the very beginning of the game. And of course, there's a timer counting down... I'd forgotten about Squaresoft's goofy need for "epic" blockbuster moments like these. Goddamn it was tedious and annoying. I'm also still having doubts about the gameplay. The GF (girlfriends? lol) summons are painful to use because those overlong animations can't be skipped, but they seem really advantageous. And I wasted so many thunder spells against that spider, it seems like I might have to draw more than I would've liked in the future. But so far the story and world still seem promising. 3 hours in.
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Post by Xeogred on Feb 4, 2022 23:36:24 GMT -5
I really, really hated that dumb-ass mechanical spider chasing you right after the first boss battle. Actually, that whole thing was typical of Square, always doing too much. You fight these two guys for a while, the real boss comes up midbattle, then you beat it and you're forced into another boss battle with a garbage ass flee-and-fight-over-and-over gimmick. You end up having to fight that stupid thing 5 or 6 times. And this is just the very beginning of the game. And of course, there's a timer counting down... I'd forgotten about Squaresoft's goofy need for "epic" blockbuster moments like these. Goddamn it was tedious and annoying. I'm also still having doubts about the gameplay. The GF (girlfriends? lol) summons are painful to use because those overlong animations can't be skipped, but they seem really advantageous. And I wasted so many thunder spells against that spider, it seems like I might have to draw more than I would've liked in the future. But so far the story and world still seem promising. 3 hours in.
lol, actually I agree that part is kind of annoying. Feels equivalent to some cinematic game design crap you see in modern AAA gaming thesedays. Especially with RPG's though, I never really like when they have some "on rails" segments like that, or multiple encounters/chase segments with a boss.
Should get better after that.
Also, those TWO GUYS, should be Biggz and Wedge!
Can you still use a GF/summon when they're equipped as Junctions? I can't remember exactly on that. But I don't recall using the summons themselves too much in this one. Although Diablos could come in handy in some situations.
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Post by paulofthewest on Feb 5, 2022 18:42:58 GMT -5
I'm fine with the battle system so far. It'll really depend on what the dungeons are like. I already know I won't be Drawing more than I have to. I'm never the one to level grind, either, or go out of my way to break the system to my advantage. I want to experience the game's world and story first and foremost, and becoming overpowered just makes the gameplay worse. While I remember liking FF8 overall, due to how FF8 leveling works I highly recommend keeping levels on the low end. Do some draws and run. I remember one run I early super-leveled and I couldn't beat it.
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