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Post by Sarge on Nov 25, 2021 16:02:46 GMT -5
I still want to give Unreal a concerted effort. Also, I keep reading the title and thinking, "Wait, others have made their own ROM/ISO dumps, too?"
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Post by toei on Nov 25, 2021 19:15:16 GMT -5
I'm gonna drop Valhollian after playing it for a couple hours. It's that Saturn SRPG no one hard of heard of until it was fan-translated last year. Unfortunately, it's no hidden gem.
At first glance, it looks similar to Shining Force 3, minus the towns. The key difference is that Datt Japan, the developers behind this game, had no idea what they were doing. I mean that literally; their only two other releases were falling block games, and they only stuck around for 2-3 years.
Let's list the reasons why I can't continue playing this:
-There are way too many enemies. By Chapter 3, I counted something like 33 or 34 in one battle.
-Enemies have way too much defense and HP. I could barely kill one a turn, sometimes two, and that's with 6 party members. Then you have to watch like 28 of the enemies' AI decide not to move, one by one.
-When characters die in battle, they have to skip the next battle. They're already falling behind in levels, and now you want to double that problem, on top of making progress even slower and harder? What kind of boneheaded game design decision is that?
-Attacks miss all the time, on both sides. At one point, I had 4 attacks miss in a row, while the enemies's counterattacks missed 3 times. It's as if they're trying to be annoying.
-A big part of the gameplay is supposed to be the combination attacks, in which two characters attack together. Except I have no idea how damage is calculated, because often it's strangely weak - weaker than the character's individual attacks in some cases!
-I read a little review on romhacking.net and apparently enemies even start to respawn later on. It sounds like a complete nightmare.
So the game not only has fundamental flaws, but they all seem to compound each other to create something that's only going to get closer and closer to unplayable as it goes on. It's a shame because a few adjustments could have made it so much more playable. Just fix the stats and kill the respawning. I was just starting out so I don't know what I would've thought of the story in the end. I'm gonna say, the beginning was nothing impressive, but it seemed to be headed towards a twist so I was somewhat intrigued. Had it just played decently, I would have gladly continued with it.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 25, 2021 22:55:03 GMT -5
I only played the opening battle, and it seemed so sloooooow. Definitely don't blame you for dropping it.
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Post by anayo on Nov 26, 2021 9:51:48 GMT -5
toeiThat's a bummer. I tend to romanticize the Sega Saturn, especially its untranslated titles that never made it outside of Japan. That was what inspired me to spend so much of my life studying the Japanese language in the first place. But not every game can be a hit. :/
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Post by toei on Nov 26, 2021 11:51:49 GMT -5
It is a bummer, I was hyped to play a old-school SRPG. But I can tell where this is going. SRPGs are difficult to balance. I dumped another obscure fan-translated one on the Genesis years ago, Vixen 357, that had a similar problem. Enemies had incredibly high defense ratings, so it took forever to kill just one, and the maps were just chock full of them. I stuck with it for a few hours and it was just getting worse and worse, I literally ran into a boss with a shield spell that prevented all damage for a few turns, with nothing that could cancel it or get past it. It really felt like they wanted to make things as tedious and protracted as possible. Sarge You can turn off the 3D battle animations. I did so very quickly, because they're really loose compared to Shining Force 3's much more dynamic attacks. They just kind of drag on. But even turned off, the game is still very slow for all the other gameplay reasons I mentioned. Still, now that I took the trouble of setting up mednafen again, I'll probably try Linkle Liver (Rinkle River?) Story within the next couple months at least. I have no doubt it'll be better, since it's from the Crusader of Centy team, and it's harder to screw up an Action RPG.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 26, 2021 15:11:47 GMT -5
Going back to the past... I wonder if there's any human out there who did NOT dump this game:
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Post by Sarge on Nov 26, 2021 15:31:01 GMT -5
I know some people that actually like that game. I'm not sure it's quite as bad as its reputation, but I definitely never finished it.
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Post by toei on Nov 26, 2021 16:46:24 GMT -5
Even weirder: I actually finished Quest: Brian's Journey, the (2D, obvs.) Gameboy Color version. It was pretty lame, thought I only have the vaguest memory. I remember that the whole reason for your quest was finding your father, but when you did it basically went "hey dad" "oh hey son" and that was it. Of course by now you probably had to beat some demon to save the world, I don't remember.
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Post by EasyHard on Nov 26, 2021 18:38:51 GMT -5
Yeah, I've beaten Quest 64 and have enjoyed revisiting it a number of times. The game can't compare to its contemporaries, but I like managing the combat and trying different "builds" so to speak.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 26, 2021 19:02:36 GMT -5
Another N64 game I never finished was Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. I just never could get into it. Of course, I bought darn near every RPG I could back then, so of course I have it. Glad there's someone that did enjoy Quest 64! I've definitely heard others that had fond memories of the game, and it's good to know that there's still some potential for me giving it more of a shot.
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