(Sore Thumbs) What Non-BT related Video Game you're playing

[Matti]

Okay, I'm totally hooked on Phantasy Star II.

In some YouTube vids (some) games in Phantasy Star series are said to be the best games ever. I don't go that far, but so far I have played PS2 more than either Crysis or Mass Effect. Ok, I had some problem with Crysis I didn't bother to solve, and when I bought Mass Effect for reduced price, I was busy playing one more turn of Civ4. But PS2 is still a decent JRPG.

[iamfanboy]

In some YouTube vids (some) games in Phantasy Star series are said to be the best games ever. I don't go that far, but so far I have played PS2 more than either Crysis or Mass Effect. Ok, I had some problem with Crysis I didn't bother to solve, and when I bought Mass Effect for reduced price, I was busy playing one more turn of Civ4. But PS2 is still a decent JRPG.

Some people have nostalgia-colored glasses, and can't tell the difference between a game that was good then and a game that's good now.

IMHO the older PS games were okay, but hardly among the top JRPGs, as their only uniqueness is the Clarkian science-is-magic setting... and even then it doesn't really do all that much with it in the 'classic' versions. Guns might as well be called bows or staffs or smiley funsticks for the difference between them and sword, and Technics is magic - it's all cosmetic, not functional.

I don't dislike them, and have some lasting affection for Phantasy Star Online as a precursor for basically every MMO right now (both good and bad aspects!) but there are definitely better JRPGs, even from that set of years (88-96).

[THUD]

XCom War of the Chosen. Great game so far I really like fighting the Lost.

[Stinger]

Metroid: Samus Returns


It is a very good return to form and a classic 2D Metroid game. Loving it.

Just got this, completely agree.  And if you are playing on a n3DS, with the 3D on, it is beautiful.  The backgrounds are just amazing.

[Matti]

I don't dislike them, and have some lasting affection for Phantasy Star Online as a precursor for basically every MMO right now (both good and bad aspects!) but there are definitely better JRPGs, even from that set of years (88-96).

Care to name some? What is your opinion about claim Phantasy Stars being the best RPGs on Mega Drive & Genesis?

[iamfanboy]

Care to name some? What is your opinion about claim Phantasy Stars being the best RPGs on Mega Drive & Genesis?

I'd say... probably best on Mega Drive & Genesis, because those systems had a serious dearth of RPGs. it says something when a game as flawed as the Genesis Shadowrun makes it onto EVERY RPG list for a system - that game was just... so grindy. So very, very grindy. The Matrix computer system was awesome, but everything else was a chore.

Okay, good/great JRPGs of the 8/16 bit era... not naming Final Fantasy, of course, that goes without saying. Some of these you've probably already played, so just skim over any you've seen.

I've heard good things about Beyond Oasis for GEN, but never played it. PS4 is the best of the Phantasy Star games.

Dragon Quest 4 (NES/DS) for the storyline. You play each ally character through their own storyline before you pick up as the main character again - sometimes as goofy stories, where you play as the merchant Torneko and get to find out what it's like on the OTHER side of the counter, and other times as more serious. Hell, DQ5 & 6 are also good - DQ5 also has a great storyline that starts you as a child and you end up the father of the legendary hero, and DQ6 is just so weird that you want to find out what's going on.

If you can, lay hands on the DS versions - they're definitive IMHO. Or the GBA versions of DQ1-3 if you really want to experience them. The NES Dragon Warrior 1 is awful, any game that you can speed up 4x and still play just fine is way too slow.

Chrono Trigger (SNES) goes without saying. Any list that doesn't have that as one of the top five RPGs of all time, if not THE best RPG ever, is a bad list. Once again, the DS version is definitive - has the Toriyama cutscenes of the PS1 version without any of the horrific slowdown of early PS1 games.

Crystalis (NES) is a seeming Zelda clone at first, but has a lot of RPG stuff and that science is magic aspect which is also good, and some pretty neat play aspects - it's a bit aged, but not nearly so bad.

Shin Megami Tensei (SNES) - though it's only available in translated roms, has a very unique setting that persists in a ton of spinoff games to this day.

Lufia & Lufia II (SNES) - Lufia 1 is WAY easy, but the second game more than makes up for it with some of the hardest puzzles you will ever see in an RPG. And technically, Lufia 1 is a sequel to Lufia 2, so it's not bad to play them a bit out of order.

Final Fantasy Legend II (Gameboy) is really SaGA 2, and probably the best of the SaGA games - It has an interesting setting, and several different leveling mechanisms. For example, Robots get stronger based on their equipment. Monsters eat meat from other monsters and can evolve into weaker or stronger versions. Once again, I like the DS version best, if only because GB graphics are.... limited, and the translation was done by a Japanese-native speaker, not English speaker, and so it's really... unique.

Secret of Mana (SNES) is also genre-defining action-RPG, and is one of the few two-player RPGs out there. But I don't really care for it all that much without another player, and the story is kind of all over the place. Seiken Densetsu 3 is probably better overall, because the story changes based on which main character you choose.

Super Mario RPG: Seven Sacred Stars (SNES) is one of the best RPG games ever. Hilarious, good mechanics, interesting storyline, and one of the best optional bosses I've ever fought.

Shadowrun (SNES) isn't a traditional JRPG, but it's also well worth playing - you wake up on a slab in a morgue and have to master magic, computers, and guns to find out who you are. It also was a very early, but very good, isometric view RPG (top down at an angle, think Fallout 1/2?)

Earthbound (SNES) is just... weird. It's a very Japanese take on America, and is just... weird. It's a straight JRPG, but set in a kind of America where it's okay to swing cracked bats at punks to turn them tame and eat hamburgers you find in garbage cans instead of swinging swords at slimes and drinking potions you find in pots.

Fire Emblem Sacred Stones (GBA) is a bit of a cheat as it's 2003, but it's what I consider the best 'classic' Fire Emblem game in that 16-bit style.

[Matti]

Thank you, iamfanboy. Looking up those games for PC is welcome diversion. I already know number of Final Fantasy games are available on Steam.

[edit]
It looks to me Sega console games are more accessible for wider range of platforms than Nintendo ones. There is sizable Mega Drive & Genesis collection on Steam, there is collection for Xbox 360, and I hope replicas of Sega consoles have better availability than Nintendo ones.

[iamfanboy]

Thank you, iamfanboy. Looking up those games for PC is welcome diversion. I already know number of Final Fantasy games are available on Steam.

Well, I lived through that era as a nerdy kid, so it's a part of my childhood - in point of fact, I remember owning FF2(4) before I owned a Super Nintendo, so a school friend and I would trade back and forth.

But I insist on being unbiased about what's good. I didn't mention, say, Brainlords or Arcana because while I know I enjoyed playing them THEN, they're somewhat unsufferable NOW.

The FF4 on Steam is the DS remake for it, which I'd recommend fairly highly - it's a classic JRPG with a lot of modern design twists. It also is one of the only Final Fantasies with a direct sequel, the After Years. I... liked it, but that's because I loved FF4.

Oh, and everyone says skip Phantasy Star 3. I only got about an hour into it so I'd have to agree. It's bad.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Beyond Oasis was a good game, but I wouldn't necessarily say that it was an RPG any more than the Super Legend of Zelda was.

[Triptych]

Dragon Age Inquisition. So far its okay, nothing special. I still think Skyrim is the best fantasy RPG game out there.

[ColBosch]

Thank you, iamfanboy. Looking up those games for PC is welcome diversion. I already know number of Final Fantasy games are available on Steam.

[edit]
It looks to me Sega console games are more accessible for wider range of platforms than Nintendo ones. There is sizable Mega Drive & Genesis collection on Steam, there is collection for Xbox 360, and I hope replicas of Sega consoles have better availability than Nintendo ones.

Sega has long had decent support for PC. Witness Lazy Game Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=581n2n_V_4c

[iamfanboy]

Sega has long had decent support for PC. Witness Lazy Game Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=581n2n_V_4c

I think it's more that Nintendo controls their own distribution network, and Sega has long since given up on their own consoles so they don't mind selling their stuff in as many venues as possible.

So I beat Apotheon this weekend. It's a side-scroller with one major difference: Graphically it looks EXACTLY like the side art from ancient Grecian jars and urns. Hope this works...



Very lovely and eye-catching.

Other than that, it's not too different from other sidescrollers, and was a lot of fun - it actually had one of the BEST boss fights I've EVER seen in a sidescroller against Artemis.

My only major complaint is that you have TOO MANY weapons and it's hard to edit your inventory and get rid of the ones that you don't want to use. By the end of the game I was ignoring the weapon hotbar entirely and just pausing the game when I wanted to equip something else.

After beating that, I dipped into Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, but it really grinds my gears in any RPG when you create a character that's supposed to be good at fighting and he still only has a 45% chance of hitting something! Or a magician that can only cast 3 spells before fainting - and it takes 3 spells to kill an enemy! Or a talky character that can still fail at talking to the early game challenges!

Then I started up Undertale, and I have to set it aside. It's a little contemplative and slow for my personal game-playing desire at this moment, but it's still on my computer and I will finish it someday.

I'm not sure what I'm going to leap into next in this game archive I got just before becoming homeless. Maybe The Witcher 1? Or Overlord? Aragami is a stealth action game and I do enjoy those.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Arcanum was a decent idea with absolutely terrible execution.  You haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the game's flaws: for example, having a high enough haggling skill will actually cause merchants to eventually attack you (the justification being that you're somehow forcing them to sell you things below cost).  The Party AI was insanely stupid, especially for spellcasters- it always tries to cast the strongest spell the caster knows regardless of situation (which can easily lead to them transforming into a Fire Elemental for about 6 seconds then falling unconscious because they burned through all their fatigue points).  Weapons take damage from attacking things, and repairing the weapon permanently lowers its max HP.  Oh, and it's quite possible to hit the level cap about 1/3rd of the way through the game.

[Matti]

I'm not sure what I'm going to leap into next in this game archive I got just before becoming homeless.

Homeless? How so? Anyway I recommend you to get laptop or tablet with attachable/detachable keyboard with at least wi-fi connection. 1,33 GHz (Atom) processor and Windows are sufficient to play many turn-based games, like MegaMek, and I've got Age of Wonders 3 and Battle Academy to run on 1,4 GHz Atom tablet well enough. If you have shortage of money, look up used machines.

[RABIDFOX50]

World of Warships

World of Tanks

Thank me later.  8)

[iamfanboy]

Homeless? How so? Anyway I recommend you to get laptop or tablet with attachable/detachable keyboard with at least wi-fi connection. 1,33 GHz (Atom) processor and Windows are sufficient to play many turn-based games, like MegaMek, and I've got Age of Wonders 3 and Battle Academy to run on 1,4 GHz Atom tablet well enough. If you have shortage of money, look up used machines.

Shortage of money isn't the problem, it's the shortage of local housing. September 1 I was kicked out of my old house - mostly in line with what I wanted, the carpets and walls were filled with mold, I just failed at finding a new home to live in even though I spent from May to August looking. I actually lost 9 kilograms due to the stress.

Right now we're crammed into a small room in my brother-in-law's house while my wife and I wait to see if we can buy a mobile home and put it in a lot. The internet up here is really spotty, and it's a 25 minute drive down into town (and then up a mountain to get back, so lots of gasoline used), so what I have to do is pretty much what's on my PC. It does mean I'm working through a backlog of games, mostly GOG.com stuff.

[Bedwyr]

Opened up Pokémon Sun for the first time in awhile so I could get the Pikachu with Ash's hat. If anyone has the game, here are details:

https://www.polygon.com/pokemon/2017/9/19/16335526/pokemon-sun-moon-pikachu-ash-hat

Six different hats and you can only choose one. Have fun.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Decided to load Fallout 4 back up.  Think I'm going to try starting a new game with all the DLCs installed this time and see how that goes.

[Triptych]

Decided to load Fallout 4 back up.  Think I'm going to try starting a new game with all the DLCs installed this time and see how that goes.

Cool. Im gonna play that one too as soon as I'm done with DAI and Batman Arkham Knight

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Among other things, I intend to play through Nuka World before meeting Garvey so that I can compete all the content without turning the Minutemen permanently hostile.

[deathshadow]

Now that I have a GTX 1070 I went back and played Gothic 3 -- since it means I finally have powerful enough hardware to ALMOST run the game properly. (that's not a joke, 11 year old game and we're JUST getting the hardware to run it as it was meant to be run)

... and amazingly for the first time EVER, I finished it! Or at least, the "play good and support the humans" storyline.

Doing so I started to notice aspects of the game mechanics, particularly the ability to "ski down hills" and the grass terrain that made me realize something -- in many ways it's a precursor to Witcher 3. SO much of what makes W3 good is actually there -- it's just hampered by the technology of the time, particularly it being a 32 bit program meaning it doesn't have the access to the RAM needed to do what they tried to do... though setting up a 4 gig RAMDISK and running the game out of that alleviated a lot of the problems. (on top of the endless community patches, DX11 patches, and so forth)

But I enjoyed it so much I went and grabbed the original off GOG. The controls are still awkward, but it's fun to see it in widescreen, aspect correct, with high def texture replacements and DX 11 effects. The original has always held a soft spot in my heart if for no other reason than having introduced me to In Extremo. Gotta love medieval songs in dead languages played on a mix of modern and period instruments as metal tunes!

I've actually been playing a LOT of older games ever since I finished my SEVENTH playthrough of Witcher 3. (second playthrough with Blood and Wine installed). With the GTX 1070 it's interesting to see how far I can push older games on resolution, frame rates, and quality. Whilst my media center/gaming rig is hooked to "only" a 52" 1080p TV, (as opposed to my workstation with the 4k 27" display) with nvidia DSR running at higher resolutions than native and scaling it down, the image ends up so smooth I swear it looks better than 4k native. Makes games like GTA 3, VC, and SA, or KOTOR 1 and 2 kind of interesting looking... particularly as it eliminates so many of the moire patterns you are used to seeing in the distance.

I also recently tried Hellbalde, Senua's Sacrifice. So much wasted potential -- combat is a slog that just destroys any attempt at what COULD have been an interesting story piece.

Oh, and if you haven't tried it, check out Perception. It's AWESOME! If you're not familiar with it you play a blind woman who gets around via echolocation. It "draws" the sounds on the screen in kind of a BS manner, and highlights important things you've used to try and recreate the better memory a blind person would have of their surroundings, but as the game progresses they start to take that away from you, so that you become more and more reluctant to make the noises needed to "see" -- making you rely more and more on memory and walking around by sound looking at a black screen. GREAT game to play in the dark with surround audio.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Hey, given that the PS4 now offers mod support for Fallout 4, can anyone recommend some particularly good ones?

[iamfanboy]

Hey, given that the PS4 now offers mod support for Fallout 4, can anyone recommend some particularly good ones?

This is based solely off of what's on Nexus Mod Manager, so I have no idea if it's PS4 compatible:

Companions Can Sneak: Just what it says on the tin. Having a companion doesn't immediately mean you fail if you're a stealthy character - vital for playing on Survival.

Everyone's Best Friend: Originally you were supposed to have Dogmeat AND another companion. They disabled the functionality, but this puts it back in.

Better Mod Descriptions: Actually gives the percentages of what each mod changes on a weapon, instead of a vague "Improves this, improves that" crapfest.

Journey: In Survival Mode, the biggest annoyance isn't really the health or whatnot, it's just being forced to walk EVERYWHERE. I'll forgive a game a lot if it doesn't waste my time. Journey lets you fast travel, with limitations that you decide on - either only to settlements (meaning you do have to do some walking, and gives you incentive to unlock more settlements), or other options that are harder or a bit easier.

There's other stuff I've used, like Craftable Vault 81 Cure, Legendary Modification (lets you create and move legendary mods), but the only one I've used and then uninstalled was, sadly, Better Item Sorting - it turned ammo weightless in Survival Mode, which was a weird turnoff. Oh, and No Negative Affinity and No Affinity Cooldown was handy for just getting the perks without having to suffer through Garvey's mediocre voice acting. 

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Survival mode doesn't interest me, but allowing a human companion AND Dogmeat at the same time like every other Fallout game sounds great.

[IAMCLANWOLF]

Anyone playing Naval Action for the pc/steam? Any good? I keep coming back to it like a hungry wolf, but... I don't want to waste funds.

[Dies Irae]

Well... I'm going to struggle through this with my shoddy Japanese skills. But man... have I been looking forward to Sen no Kiseki III.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDT3EMCP3Fg


As far as RPGs go, via their Trails (Kiseki) series,  Nihon Falcom has probably taken more hours from me than any other gaming company. It doesn't hurt that the english localizations (Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel) by XSEED Games have been excellent so far.

If anything, they all feel like classic titles in both feel and scope from the classic age of JRPG epics.

[Matti]

As far as RPGs go, via their Trails (Kiseki) series,  Nihon Falcom has probably taken more hours from me than any other gaming company. It doesn't hurt that the english localizations (Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel) by XSEED Games have been excellent so far.

If anything, they all feel like classic titles in both feel and scope from the classic age of JRPG epics.

One YouTube video goes in to detail about Trails* games (sorry, didn't bookmark it and don't remember title either). Entire series takes a place in the same world (unlike Final Fantasy series), but each game is on different location with different set of characters. With this, we can draw comparison to Elder Scrolls series (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Skyrim...). But in addition of that, Trails games have tons of dialogue, politics, trade, and stuff. Like BattleTech source books... I think? And it all makes sense, or at least more so than Fasanomics. I haven't played any games of the series (yet), but I have understood that much about of it. Have I got it right?

[Dies Irae]

Pretty much the long and short of it. The Kiseki (Trails) series is set on the continent of Zemuria, a formerly medieval-esque continent which has suddenly undergone the industrial revolution thanks to the introduction of a magi-tech power source known as Orbal energy around fifty or so years prior. In turn, this has pretty much thrown the old social order into crisis, with technologically advanced smaller states rising to the forefront, and the growing obsolesce of the older feudal political system.

As to the cast members, well they get around, and they'll occasionally get referenced, or cameo in subsequent series.

They're very dialogue heavy games in a sense, and generally slow burns. The first game in each trilogy/duology is generally accepted as being slower and is usually more focused on world-building than its predecessors. As to the quality of world building, the games themselves just feel organic for the want of a better word. The fact that NPC dialogue (and location) changes after every world progression really gives this feeling of being in a living breathing world. The fact that they even have their own plot arcs (like a couple going through a relationship spat or a jealous department store staffer competing with her older sister) and travel between towns between chapters really gives a feeling of depth in an "I remember you..." sense.

So far, XSEED has churned out very good localizations of the 'Sora' or 'Sky' trilogy on PC and a very good port of the first 'Sen' or 'Cold Steel' game. Cold Steel 2 is on PS3, but is being ported over next year. As to Sen 3, which releases on the PS4 somewhere around... well... today in Japan... one can only hope. They're generally good games though so if JRPGs are your thing, they get recommended mostly without reservation.

Trails in the Sky, Trails in the Sky Second Chapter and Trails in the Sky: The Third are top down isometric games.
Trails of Cold Steel made the leap to 3D and uses a 3rd person chase camera and controls similar to modern JRPGs. It also has a higher concentration of modern high school anime tropes, so if that causes allergies, well... recommendation levels might drop.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Finally unlocked Ballistic Weave in Fallout 4, which I did not get in my first playthrough due to it being bugged.  Now my character is wearing Summer Shorts that provide better protection than a full suit of Combat Armor.  And since Summer Shorts are one of only two pieces of clothing that allow you to wear stuff on your legs as well as your arms, I've got some serious defenses going on.

And I just hit level 30 so I can now go through Nuka-World and get all those quests done, then finally go back and make contact with the Minutemen in Lexington and unlock Codsworth as a companion.

[iamfanboy]

Finally unlocked Ballistic Weave in Fallout 4, which I did not get in my first playthrough due to it being bugged.  Now my character is wearing Summer Shorts that provide better protection than a full suit of Combat Armor.  And since Summer Shorts are one of only two pieces of clothing that allow you to wear stuff on your legs as well as your arms, I've got some serious defenses going on.

And I just hit level 30 so I can now go through Nuka-World and get all those quests done, then finally go back and make contact with the Minutemen in Lexington and unlock Codsworth as a companion.

There's actually quite a bit of clothing that allows all armor pieces to be worn - my favorite is the Military Fatigues for the +2 Agility, but Army Fatigues are available early on and the Vault Suit can be modded even before you get ballistic weave.

So I played about 5-6 hours of Tyranny, a PC isometric RPG that 'minds me a lot of Icewind Dale in that you're managing a party. The story is that you're working for the Big Bad Evil Guy just as he's wrapping up his conquest of the entire world. It's... fine... but for some reason isn't holding my attention right now.

So I moved to Pikmin, the first one. Still not very far.