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Post by Chema on Nov 11, 2022 5:25:47 GMT -5
The Darkness is one of the most interesting and unique shooters of the 7th gen. Good to know. What's your opinion of this one?: I didn't like it as much the first The Darkness, but it's also worth a playthrough. It's unique and interesting in its own way. The sequel's gunplay is much more polished and the protagonist's supernatural powers have been expanded, but the game is so different from the first one, it could have been a reboot. Visually, as is evident from any screenshot, the sequel uses cel-shading techniques to imitate the look of a comic. There's a lot of bright colors and contrasts, whereas the first game is relentlessly dark and grim. The story introduces a lot of the comic's fantasy lore, which the first game had ignored. Tonally, the sequel is also much closer to the comic books. In the first game, the antagonists were a corrupt police chief officer and a traitor inside the protagonist's mob family. In the sequel, the antagonist is the leader of an ancestral dark magic order. The change in tone is also reflected in the protagonist's design: in the first game, he always wears jeans and a jacket, but now he's wearing the magic suit he wears in the comics. If you're not aware of the series roots in 90s comics, the changes in the Darkness II are jarring to say the least. The gameplay is also faster, influenced by arena shooters, and works with a scoring system. The better your kills, the more points to upgrade your powers. It works well enough and it's fun to wreak havoc, but the later stages have some very annoying design choices. The developers didn't seem to know how to increase the challenge without reducing ammo dropouts and enemies. Despite losing steam in the last third of it's story mode, I'd recommend checking it out. It's the closest to playing a comic book in the 7th gen.
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Post by Kazin on Nov 11, 2022 8:32:05 GMT -5
There were a lot of things I loved about FF12 (its world design, combat mechanics, subsystems, amazing graphics/OST, stupendous exploration, smooth gameplay) but its plot and character drama weren't any of those things. If I'm being honest, for me to actually care about a JRPG's plot and characters legitimately is more the exception. IMO the vast majority of JRPGs have crappy writing and doofy characters, so those aren't things that make me want to play them. Rather I like exploring the fantasy worlds and engaging in interesting combat systems, two things that FF12 nails with aplomb. At the risk of getting myself booted from this board, I'll say the combat system is the worst part of FF12 to me. It flat out doesn't work no matter which way you look at it - if it's supposed to be a single player MMO, even with every single gambit in the game, it's impossible to program your party members to not be idiots. The reason I don't like not being able to directly control my party in any game is context - in general, the characters are fine, but there are situations where even if you could reprogram your gambits mid battle, you'd still have to give manual commands to your characters to get them to do what you need. There's also no way to program the characters to "feel" out a long battle, either - they can't adjust via gambits to think to themselves, "well, it appears I won't need to buff/debuff this boss much, so I can concentrate on using my MP on attack spells and abilities" or "I need to heal every X seconds or so" rather than programming them to heal when health is less than whatever percent. If you go into a boss battle or whatever with bad gambit programming, your best bet is to reload or just wait to die. It's extremely inelegant as designed. I've had people say to me "you can directly give orders to your party members in FF12, too!" but that is also terrible. The game is already fairly slow paced with a lot of waiting around for your party to just do stuff while you mostly sit there, not putting any inputs in at all, watching the battle play out by itself, so flipping it to pause the battle to give commands slows down the game even more. And even then, it's not as fluid and quick as you'd want like in other games even within the FF series - often, the character you just gave an order to will either finish what they were already doing first, or waste a "turn" cancelling that action before they'll do what you want. And, worst of all, there are no gambits to program position of your characters, which is the part where it being a "single player MMO" (or "good game") completely falls apart. Near the end of the game, there are enemies that have status abilities that can put your characters to sleep/paralyze them/etc. No matter what I did, any CPU controlled characters would, like lemmings, saunter right up to the area of effect of a status attack from an enemy, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it with the battle system as designed. It's one of the most frustrating design decisions I've ever encountered in any game, regardless of genre. There's no "don't get within X yards of an enemy" gambit, and yet they designed encounters around needing one like that. It's just sloppy. I've played a lot - far too much, frankly, so much so that I've taken an extended break - of Final Fantasy XIV. That is good MMO design, and your party members are human, so unless they themselves are actual idiots (which I grant you is possible), you won't be wiping the party due to someone not knowing they have to heal or use Esuna or whatever. Best of all, you don't have to spend hours in a menu carefully programming characters so they know to use a heal spell, you can just say over chat "heal up" or whatever, rather than wasting a ton of time thinking of how to counter endless if/then scenarios. It also has much more of an action feel than 12, in that you have more direct control of your character, as does everyone else, meaning dodging enemy attacks is not only viable, but required in tougher fights. If one of your party members keeps sauntering up to the tankbuster, at least you can make fun of them in chat or something - you can't do that with a CPU controlled character, you just have to sit there and ask yourself why you even enjoy this stupid hobby lol I'd love to say I enjoyed the hunts in Final Fantasy XII, but they're dependent on the battle system, which is terrible, so I can't even enjoy them. Exploring? Sure, there's some neat vistas in FF12, but the gameplay is so outright badly designed, none of it is worth slogging through the interminable battle system to see imo. I don't even think the story is that bad - it's fairly generic and thin, but it's Final Fantasy - that's usually the case if we're honest lol. I can't even enjoy party building that much, because the leveling system is basically the sphere grid from FFX, but worse. You can't equip certain things until you unlock the ability to do so - I can soooort of understand that for weapons, as just picking up a spear in real life doesn't mean you'd know how to use it. But a hat? You don't know how to use a hat? You put it on your head, man. Just put it up there! Where's the "here's how to wear a hat" gambit? The remaster doesn't fix things in this regard, either, it just sort of changes the problems around. ...crap. Ex's handle is @ admin . I'm getting booted from this board, aren't I? lmao
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 11, 2022 9:21:31 GMT -5
Heh no worries Kazin , we all got some strong takes here sometimes. Putting over FF14 in this comparison is interesting. It always sounds cool to me especially with the expansions, but dang I just don't have the time or interest in MMO's sadly. I'll get to see what that team can do with FF16 at least. Reading all that though just made me smirk a little. I wonder if you've played FF13, or FF15? Because if you haven't and did someday, those two games could make you beg for FF12 in comparison. At least when it comes to all the AI control and such. In FF13 there's no customization at all for that stuff, you only control the party "leader" per battle from what I remember (and it's game over if they die, regardless if your other party members are still up). Amusingly enough I think once the game unlocks its systems after the 30 hour tutorial (this legend is no exaggeration), it's an excellent and cool combat system. But I love FF12's Gambit system and greatly missed that level of customization for the party. In FF13 you just have to pray that your party heals the right person at the right time (you think the game over paired party leader is the healing priority? nope lol), uses the right buffs or debuffs, etc... there is no setting an order for that stuff.
FF15... just sucks balls, don't get me started.
I think off the top of my head in FF12, it was only magic usage that I didn't feel comfortable with relying on the party AI. But it might have just been my preference to control Ashe a lot in the back half (like I keep saying lately DQ4 Maya is making me love mages thesedays haha).
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I'm totally with Chema on The Darkness. The first game was by Starbreeze who did the excellent Riddick games as well. The Darkness even has some hub like sections feeling very Deus Ex-ish that I loved. It's very serious and pretty awesome, but definitely ends on a cliffhanger from what I recall. And then yeah... The Darkness II is neat on its own, but it's definitely not the sequel I would have really wanted. In retrospect it's still the first one I liked way more. Mike Patton of Faith no More fame also does some voice work on these and is pretty excellent at it.
- The Darkness - The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay - The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
All great games I'd highly recommend from Starbreeze. I haven't gotten to 2012's Syndicate (reboot) yet because it always looked kind of weird, like it integrated multiplayer or something? No real campaign? Maybe I'm incorrect on that though. I know it had some fans.
Some key staff from Starbreeze later formed MachineGames, you can definitely feel some of the shared DNA in the modern Wolfenstein games. They're alright, but I think the three Starbreeze games I listed above are better.
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Post by Kazin on Nov 11, 2022 9:27:12 GMT -5
Xeogred So I think FF13 fixes FF12s flaws - it gets rid of party positioning being an issue, and completely gets rid of the super dull gambit system in favor of a more streamlined battle experience. The "roles" your party has are programmed well enough to act in sensible ways, usually, and changing them is pretty quick by spending your action bars (been a while, I forget the term they use haha). The battle system also moves along at an extremely fast pace, and since you literally can't overlevel until chapter 11 or whatever, most early battles are designed around the party you actually have. Do I think it's the best FF game? Absolutely not. I do understand why people don't like it, too - both people who prefer FF12 and others. It does take far, far too long to get past the tutorial section, too, I agree. Still, I had fun with it, and I'm due a replay of it. 13-2 kind of breaks it, but I still enjoyed that too haha. Haven't beaten Lightning Returns, but I haven't given it much of a fair shake yet, either. I haven't beaten FF15, but I have to admit I didn't play long enough to "get" it's battle system, so I'll pass on commenting on that one for now lol
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 11, 2022 9:34:51 GMT -5
Wow I didn't realize FF13 was 2009, FF13-2 was 2011. Was going to suggest we were getting a little off topic for the retro forum...
I'll just say I can probably give FF13 a fair 7/10 and think about replaying it someday. My biggest issues are the long 30 hour tutorial, the horrendous characters and story (I did like Fang) ... but it was otherwise pretty fun and high production spectacle (something I didn't feel at all with FF15 basically taking place in Iowa with some gas stations. how "epic").
FF13-2 is top tier, absolutely loved it. Fixed everything wrong with FF13 to me. Combat system basically unlocked immediately, a recurring good rival villain, and a new cast of characters who talk more like normal human beings. Everytime Lightning popped up it was torture, lol. The time travel seemed handled well too. And dang did I love the final boss fight. I'll gladly revisit this one someday.
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Post by Ex on Nov 11, 2022 11:34:13 GMT -5
Thanks for explaining all that Chema. I went ahead and ordered these for 360 based on your recommendations. The first game sounds the best, but I'm open to an alternative take via the second. At the risk of getting myself booted from this board If disagreeing with an admin's tastes was grounds for banning, toei would have been banned from day one. To the contrary, I for one value disagreement in forum discussion. The most boring gaming forums are overly PC echo chambers full of sycophants. >the combat system is the worst part of FF12 to me >It flat out doesn't work no matter which way you look at it I disagree, I loved the gambit system. I had my party's combat gambits so tight, I could walk all over the map exploring, and my team would take care of business on auto-pilot. I would just soak in the scenery and plot my trajectories. People have done some clever things with the gambit system that you could not normally do with a typical JRPG. >impossible to program your party members to not be idiots Disagree again. My party even beat some of the bosses, and many of the mark monsters, without my intervention at all. Simply based on my AI subroutine programming. Perhaps it's a case of GIGO. I do read a lot of people complain about AI issues in FF12, but I think that's a flawed argument given the player has full control over their party's actions via the gambit program system. So that's like blaming a badly trained dog for not fetching correctly. >There's also no way to program the characters to "feel" out a long battle, either - they can't adjust via gambits to think to themselves, >"well, it appears I won't need to buff/debuff this boss much, so I can concentrate on using my MP on attack spells and abilities" There are ways to do this, but I don't feel like typing eight paragraphs on how to do so correctly. Neither would myself doing as such change your mind. (I'm a firm believer that internet debates never change the participants' minds. 🤷♂️ ) Rather I suggest spending time reading complex gambit guide programming techniques online. They can improve one's cleverness towards the gambit implementation. >It's extremely inelegant as designed I don't agree, but that's a subjective matter. >The game is already fairly slow paced with a lot of waiting around for your party to just do stuff I'm not sure how that's a problem with FF12 but not a problem with loads of turn-based JRPGs? But folks who had that opinion is why the remaster of FF12 has a fast forward system. Lots of people who played the remaster kept it on fast forward most of the time. >There's no "don't get within X yards of an enemy" gambit That's because you have direct movement control over your party. >Ex's handle is @ admin That's because I created this forum. >I'm getting booted from this board, aren't I? Not at all. I'll just say the reason you don't like FF12, is because you don't like its combat system. And the reason you don't like its combat system, is because you aren't competently programming the gambits. That can be rectified by reading in-depth guides about how to cleverly utilize its if/then nature to maximum effect. I didn't need guides personally, but I came from a programming background so my mindset was already in that space. An anecdote on gambits. Many years ago I had a close friend who played FF12 before I did. I remember him getting pissed because he swore there was a forced loss against the wall boss. He thought you had to lose to the first wall boss, then could beat the second wall boss. Later when I played FF12 I easily beat both wall bosses, proving his theory was incorrect. He was irritated with that and blamed FF12's combat system. But in reality should have blamed himself. He simply didn't program the gambits as strategically and intelligently as I had programmed mine. The point of this story is a LOT of players did not understand the gambit system well enough to enjoy FF12. That's fair enough, because compared to most JRPGs, FF12's combat system IS rocket science. As for FF12 being slow, as mentioned previously, the remaster's fast forward feature fixes that. Also, I've not played any of the FF MMORPGs, but that's 'cause I'm not an online gamer. I've also not played any of the FF13s or FF15, at least not yet. - That explains everything. Yeah, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was super great considering it was a licensed title. I haven't played Dark Athena yet. Syndicate (2012) has a single-player offline campaign. Though it was its co-op campaign that people raved about.
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Post by Kazin on Nov 11, 2022 12:05:44 GMT -5
>There's no "don't get within X yards of an enemy" gambit That's because you have direct movement control over your party. Not elegantly - or, I would argue, competently. I would have to switch control over to whatever character is moving in a way I don't want them to, which iirc would cancel whatever actions they were queueing up (I may be misremembering the ability cancellation part, but I don't think I am), then switch to the next character misbehaving, and so on, risking the first character I adjusted already wandering right back into the line of fire. Doing this, imo, also defeats the purpose of the gambit system anyway - if I have to manually jump in to adjust their positions when they're wandering into attack range, why not also let me give them commands like in an action time battle game or something like that, removing the need for the gambits entirely? Or at least give me a gambit to tell them how to behave when they're in attack range. But you don't get that, because the battle system is poorly designed and thought through. From your Bits & Pieces link: "You can only have so many gambits set at a particular time." This is why I find the system frustrating. Give me unlimited gambit slots so I can program my guys any way I need, not a couple different setup opportunities. Having to go into a menu often (that I've described to others, occasionally, as "Excel spreadsheet management" - see later in this post lol) to change stuff around is the absolute height of tedium. Let me go in as I unlock new gambits to make my characters smarter, more dynamic, let me see some progression. Instead, I get limited slots, so I'm delving into the menu to tailor them to whatever fight is coming up if it's a boss or mark or whatever (usually meaning I have to lose the battle because you can't adjust gambits midbattle, requiring a reload, something I hate in any RPG regardless of battle system). I freely admit it could be - and probably is - me not engaging with the system on the same level as you or other experts at the game. Though... why would I want to? The system is antithetical to everything I want out of an RPG - it's like watching someone else playing a video game, rather than me controlling it, when things are set up "correctly." Yes, I'm supposed to be the one figuring out how to set things up "correctly," but the whole process is like setting up a billion dominoes and then seeing whether they all fall when you push the first one over (this analogy isn't perfect, obviously, because you can go in and adjust things mid-fight, but I think you take my point lol). This might be my favorite bit from that link: "At the end of the day, what is a good JRPG if not something that allows you to tinker with stats and numbers like a madman on an Excel spreadsheet?" To me, that sums up Final Fantasy XII perfectly. It's an Excel spreadsheet with some animations that play out when the formulas calculate. The problem with Final Fantasy XII is the spreadsheet is all you get. The illusion of control and dynamic decision making which is why I like playing video games in the first place is completely gone from the game, making playing it feel like work. I viscerally hate the game and everything it stands for (as I'm sure I've made very clear by this point haha). In any case, my commenting about your handle was an attempt to lightly indicate that I hope you and anyone who likes the game not to take any of the above personally. I have a difficult time talking about FFXII without coming off as, well, unhinged lmao (on another board, once upon a time, I had to tell myself to not talk about FF12 because the userbase was sick of my constant complaining about it lol). All of this is subjective, as you say, anyway, and like you also say, we're not going to get each other to change our minds, and I don't really want to anyway. I hesitated posting that first one since, again, I don't want anyone to feel bad about liking a game or whatever, or to try to get them to stop liking it, or anything like that. I just foam at the mouth a bit when it comes to FF12 lol.
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Post by toei on Nov 11, 2022 12:20:15 GMT -5
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Post by Kazin on Nov 11, 2022 12:46:30 GMT -5
Ex ...well now I'm curious about your thoughts on Wind Waker lol. But let's not - I've derailed this thread enough! EDIT: what the... what happened to your post
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Post by Ex on Nov 11, 2022 12:51:30 GMT -5
Kazin>The system is / like watching someone else playing a video game, rather than me controlling it But you are controlling it. You assign commands and then let your subordinates carry them out. If the result goes badly, it's your planning that was the problem, not the subordinates' actions. FF12's party members literally have no minds of their own, they are hard coded to follow the player's gambits as absolute law. In this instance, I don't think you lack the intelligence to make proper gambit schemes, but rather you despise the system itself to the point you can't be bothered. In that regard, I appreciate the lengths to which you'll go to explain why FF12's combat system is not to your liking. While I disagree, I'm not going to spend more time debating the gambit system's merits. As I said before, forum debates never change participants' minds. I can't think of a single instance in 25 years of using internet forums where I actually saw that happen. (Not that debates aren't interesting and entertaining in their own right, they can be.) I do fully comprehend you do not approve of FF12's combat system, to the point it ruins the game for you. In contrast, I loved the gambit system and I had continual success utilizing it strategically. It was one of the big reasons I love FF12 and think it's the best 3D FF. >Excel spreadsheet with some animations that play out when the formulas calculate The difference with FF12, is you are prefilling the cels in anticipation of situations, as opposed to filling in the cels as situations occur. >to lightly indicate that I hope you and anyone who likes the game to take any of the above personally >I don't want anyone to feel bad about liking a game or whatever I don't take your disdain for FF12 personally. Just as you don't take my disdain for P3P personally. If we all liked and disliked the same things this forum would be over with. That kind of hivemind leads to vacuous pointless echo chambers. Also, it requires a childish person to be so wrapped up in their media choices, that they suffer a personal affront when someone criticizes said media. I can understand if a twelve year old feels that way, as they have not yet built a culturally distinct persona upon life experiences, lacking independent weltanschauung. But any adult should be long passed such immaturity. And I think we're all adults on HRG. >I just foam at the mouth a bit when it comes to FF12 That's how I feel about Wind Waker. So I try not to talk about that vile, wretched abomination anymore. - toeiTurboGrafx-16's momma so dumb she got beat by an 8-bit console from 1983. EDIT: what the... what happened to your post
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