Mechanics you were too dumb to understand
>>737855554I'm still too dumb to understand them tho. I really don't understand JRPGs except pokemon.
>>737855554I still don't understand the line-up attacks in La Pucelle.https://youtu.be/aRqN9lyfesU?t=28
>>737855554I understand the mechanics, but the UI was fucking horribly.
>>737855554haha...
You had to be a certified genius to understand FFVIII's "Junction" system, and a lot of people dropped it simply because the system was so poorly designed and explained. "intellectuals" though consider it creative. The Junction system was a sort of "line in the sand" for fans. Some claim it was fine, but if you were too stupid to understand then that's not on the developers. The other side disagrees, claiming that it's poorly designed if the player can't figure it out, or it's not properly explained.
>>737855554I didn't get the limit break upgrade system for a while into my playthrough, so I was stuck with level ones for half the game.
>>737855554FF8.new player:>So I draw 99 Fires and then Junction it to Attack and I do about 200 more damageexperienced player:>So I played cards at the garden and refined it all into god magic and then junctioned it and I hit for 9999 before even leaving the start area
i can't remember what it was exactly but i was playing star ocean 3 and got kinda far in but realized i fucked up stats or something with weapons or some other system that would've taken a lot of work to fix so i dropped it
>>737855973Its poorly designed because it actively punishes you for using magic.
>>737856000Me with crisis core. 99atk darkness before chapter 3.
After dozens of vidya that have this mini game, I still don't get it.
>>737856014the game itself actively punishes you for engaging in combat at all, so that tracks.
>>737855973I dont think anyone had trouble understanding junction at all. It was just a stupid system that turned fun magic spell casting into hoarding items and punished you for using anything. Nobody asked for that in a Final Fantasy game kek
>>737856009i dont recal anything like that but i recall the crafting being confusing and kinda random
>>737855554This isn’t a complicated system to understand. I don’t want to throw shade or be rude, but fucking hell dude. Read nigga.
>>737855554I think we had a thread last week where someone didn't understand the bravery mechanic in fucking Dissidia.
>>737855554I got Dragon Warrior 3 on the GameBoy when I was like 5 years old. I didn't understand how to equip things so I just played without doing that. My only game prior was pokemon and you didn't equip in that game. I just leveled up a bunch and made to I think an area with crab enemies.I had more fun doing the beginning dream sequences than playing the no gear grind game.
>>737855593Kill monsters = get stronger
>>737856123yeah nobody was confused, it was just counter intuitive and unfun and not everybody wanted to play a card game
vagrant story's custom weapon crafting system. hit a wall when no matter what i slapped together on a weapon, a dragon boss was just about invulnerable. i kept adding damage and damage types and it was still just "1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1." The game never explained that an enemy's highest resistance applies to all damage from a weapon. So if you have a weapon with all damage types, and the enemy is 99% resistant to one of them, it resists 99% of all damage from the weapon.
>>737856000That's what I did in my first and only playthrough though.
>>737856000>experienced player:If I junction to magic I draw 9 every time instead of 1-2.Sorry you are retarded anon. None of the minmaxing shit matters. Easiest way to play the game is just play through it killing what you encounter.
>>737856426>level scalingoops
>>737856058You're most likely getting filtered by the language barrier. It's somewhat similar to poker but with a bunch of additional rules tacked on but they're not intuitive in the slightest. You're never going to understand mahjong unless you genuinely want to understand it and are willing to put time into it.
>>737855915>Have sat down to try and beat it four times >Never finish it The OST and setting are kino, and even the characters and combat are fun, so I don't know why I always drop it. I'm just too stupid to do gun customization and fully understand the game's battle system fully. It's not even a bad game. I'm just stupid...I guess.
>>737855554Materia could have been fun but all the fun stuff is at the end of the game and you will never use it. Surprised I've never heard of a materia randomizer.
>>737855973Stupid people shouldn't have been in our hobby, look how it turned out.
>>737855915>>737856521Is there an easy way to play this with cheats where you can ohko everything? Honestly the atmosphere in this game is so kino but the autistic battle system is so off putting.
>>737856414Vagrant Story's weapon building system is fine on paper. The problem is the mechanics operating under the hood are fucking retarded and essentially force you to build weapons in an extremely specific way otherwise it can be borderline impossible to raise certain stat combos.>>737856426>Easiest way to play the game is just play through it killing what you encounter.If you're going to be condescending you had better make damn sure you know what you're talking about. The objectively easiest way to play through FF8 is to rush zero encounters ASAP so you never gain exp because leveling up is nothing but detrimental to the player.
>>737855554I downloaded it from xbox a few years ago and got stuck on this part. I just didnt upgrade my characters and/or didnt select the right squad and I can NOT beat this faggot. I remember I spent like a month going back from time to time but the game just stopped for me there.
>>737856729But how are you struggling? Do you not have any Cures? Do you have zero healing consumables? It's literally impossible to lose this fight even if you get there at lowest realistic level simply by using basic attacks/limits with Barret and some other character casting Cure every turn.
>>737855554>the circle materia goes in the uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck
>>737855915What's hard about this. You can do the training stages over and over.
>>737855554Legend of Mana temperinghttps://forge.grendel.fr/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTslVema0uo
>>737856826>It's literally impossible to lose this fightwell it clearly isnt. He kills all my guys before I can kill him. healing doesnt do enough and it just waste would could have been an attack on him
>>737856009You get points on level that you can put into attack or defense. These effect how the AI behaves. If you increase defense characters will run away from enemies instead of attacking without caring about dying. It should only be an early annoyance if you prioritize defense, don't have healing spells and characters are near death a lot. Understandably annoying though. You do want high def eventually.
>>737856709>Vagrant Story's weapon building system is fine on paper>monster is vulnerable to fire but immune to cold>you have fire and water damage on a weapon>the weapon will do no damagethis is not "fine on paper."
>>737856571>but all the fun stuff is at the end of the game and you will never use itmay such cases with jrpg.
>>737856907you are too dumb for video games.
>>737856014It doesn't actively punish you for using magic. It recontextualizes magic as a stat source and gives a consistent utility and use for magic whether the character is built for physical damage or it's a spell you don't want to use. It's the same sort of retarded midwit anti-game rhetoric that sees a game rising to meet the challenge of the player with increasing difficulty and thinks they're being punished instead of rewarded with a game actually testing their skills. And right on cue, >>737856085
>>737856414you cant have all damage types so thats a moot point. what the game fail to explain is that its not affinity type that matter but weapon type and elemental type. get the right weapon type and you'll do normal damage. get right element on top and you'll delete bosses. affinity is useless.
>>737856729new ff are designed with this fucker in mind btw
>>737855554My little brother got filtered on Chain of Memories with the Cards and Sleights.
>>737855554I never understood the T S compass looking thing as a kid
>>737857012>taking things out of context to reinforce your argument because you know it's a weak argument
>>737857067>>737857153incel rage
>>737857165The whole T/S split was completely unnecessary. There was no real logic behind it, it was just some retarded attempt at character customization/limitation instead of giving everyone all of their artes.
>>737855735>the UI was fucking horribly.if you don't understand english of course it's going to be difficult
>>737857198nigger you are stuck on a tutorial boss i beat without even blinking when I was 7. let me fucking reiterate: midgard was the fucking tutorial you fucking gimp
when you were too youngstupid to understand how to properly do "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out"
>>737856000>So I played cardslost you therefuck you
I don't understand how PoE works at all despite having hundreds of hours playing.
>>737857114The game tells you all of them have an effect on the resulting damage which is true, the extent of which is what requires experimentation and is arguably important to the idea of it being a game but it's also not difficult to assume that the most innate aspect of the weapon is the most influential. Even besides that, Break Arts offer options between the different types which make it clearer.
>>737857236eh that looks like a normal typo, not an ESL moment
>>737857158I played this game for the first time when I was 28 and I thought the cards and sleights were retarded so I don’t blame your brother at all
>>737857176I accept your concession.
Whatever the fuck causes Skulls to zap you in La Mulana. Sometimes you can whip objects, sometimes you can't whip the exact same object in a different room, sometimes you can't whip at all. Fuck if I knew, just annoying when half the stuff you need are hidden behind things you need to break.
>>737856729That shit does 40 dmg per turn. You have fucking 3x 800hp and you still lose? That achievement is harder than beating dark souls with just one foot on a keyboard.
>>737856173Each character has crafting levels and an assortment of things they are able to craft.NPC craftsmen have the same.They also have cost % modifiers.Each crafted item has a base cost +/- a small amount. Some items have the same cost like each character having a weapon with the same cost.Each crafted item has a difficulty 0-100.There is also an item you can get for each crafting type that gives a bonus to crafting that type.When you assign 3 characters/NPCs to the crafting line it will pick a random item those have in their crafting list and say a cost. This is the cost per attempt to create it. Chance to create an item is the combined skill of the crafters - the difficulty of the item. You can fiddle with the menu to change the item being created, reflected in the cost, until you get the range for something you want.Equipment can be upgraded by running it through the crafting line if any of the effects on it have a number in brackets. The number in brackets is the different things it can become. Certain bad effects can either duplicate themselves or disappear. Most effects only have an improvement.Synthesis takes an effect from one item and applies it to an empty spot on a weapon/armor. Synthesis applies one affect per time through the crafting line from top to bottom. It always works but is expensive and takes a rare material.
>>737855554How. I played this shit at like 9 and did fine. Are you dumber than a 9 year old?
>>737857501yeah i don't think that's his screenshot dude
>>737856414Vagrant story filtered me. You are supposed to change weapons for every enemy to build affinity and the menu is slow as fuck.
>>737857346its counter intuitive because it doesnt make sense to be able to build race affinity on a race that is pretty impervious to your weapon type
>>737857501>>737857264This boss fight comes out of nowhere while youre going up the tower and it introduces a bullshit feature where youre on separate elevator, so only ranged attacks work. I didnt have Barret in my group previously. I had Cloud, the lion thing, and the healing girl. you are needlessly being assholes
>>737856729Hey man could you give it another try and record the fight so we can see what you are doing wrong?You might actually get an answer that helps, but at the very least it would be funny to see.
>>737857158Mine did too lmao. Really enjoyed this game, damn shame they just ruined the series
>>737857632you aren't, the only things that truly matter is whether your weapon is blunt/edge/piercing, class affinity is a noob trap. though I agree not having quick weapon switching and slow menus in a game that encourages weapon switching makes me think it was tackled late
>>737857687OP spent a month trying to beath that shit, anon. A MONTH. Can you imagine the retardation needed to dig a grave that deep just because of a simple "range and magic only" boss that barely tickles your party.
>>737857632The menu might not be as fast as the shortcuts but it's still very quick, there's just two extra buttons. You also don't need to build affinity, just get the type right between edge, pierce and blunt. Again, Break Arts can fill a void here and more and more I'm thinking that was part of their intended use.>>737857656Why not? It's still hitting the enemy so it's going to get higher. Obviously it's not going to have much of an effect on the overall damage when it's got the wrong type nerfing it but the systems are working exactly as they normally do, it would be more awkward if it was the other way around.
>>737857632I tried playing it for the first time ever this year after nearly two decades of people recommending it to me. Even on an emulator, the menus are incredibly slow. I can't imagine playing this on the original hardware. To add insult to injury, it's in your best interest to frequently check the menu for enemy weaknesses every combat. Not only that, but casting a buff spell at the beginning of every fight became tedious. I eventually stopped playing because I hit a brick wall and couldn't get my hands on a weapon to kill one particular boss, I forget which, and I just didn't have the affinity necessary to do meaningful damage, nor did I fully understand the mechanics enough to really understand how to get what I needed.The mechanics are a little too restrictive for how outlandish and experimental they are. I genuinely found myself with four or five different weapons and genuinely, everything was doing 1 damage. I eventually gave up. I wanted to like this game, but almost everything in it is really asinine. I respect how ambitious it is, however.
>>737856502>>737856709Literally doesn't matter. I've played it a lot. Maxing GF with Seifer then Edea without ever leveling is so much more time consuming and you are gimped out of abilities the entire game.
BEATH
>>737857687Cloud's not available in that fight. I do understand that fight being difficult if you don't have offensive materia on your party members, as literally only ranged characters can hit it normally, which is just Barret at that point in the game.
>>737856901I modified this to add color. I still don't know how areas should be placed. I'm not sure if this is supposed to show their placement or not.
>>737858071>acts condescending>gets called out as a retard>tries to move the goalpost in an attempt to preserve his fragile egoNobody is talking about doing convoluted level 1 runs. Just shut the fuck up and learn your place. You're not smart enough to pull off the condescending act. Remember that and avoid embarrassing yourself like this.
>>737858028>It's still hitting the enemy so it's going to get higher.that's how people get to the first wyvern (or most bosses really) and hit for 1 damage, they built class affinity and perhaps add even more with a gem but have the wrong type so it's useless. at the very least the weapon type shouldnt penalizing so much
>>737858042vagrant story had many interesting and original ideas but poorly implemented because it was rushed out due to being developed when the ps1 was nearing end of life and the ps2 was right around the corner. I still think its a good game but its definitively not going to be for everyone in its current incarnation.
>>737858254whoa
>>737857687how the fuck do you not have magic materia on your characters?
>>737858406I found the ideas to be very interesting, but it is absolutely not welcoming to newcomers who are unfamiliar with what the mechanics are trying to do.
>>737858557on the other end when you fully understand its mechanics it becomes very trivial to beat. kind of like FF8. honestly I was more pissed at the story being blatantly cut down by a good third if not more, than at the wonky UX
>>737857687even a child shouldn't have any trouble unless you are at the absolute minimum leveleven then its easy at that level if you buy some potions or grenades or something
>>737858042There is literally a manual in the menu that clearly explains all the mechanics and the game dumps weapons of varying types on you from the very beginning.>>737858314I understand the sentiment, but I can't help but think making weapon type less important would only lead to people even less inclined or capable of learning the difference and having a rougher time going forward, plus it results in its own interesting playstyles. Also, combining blades lets you at least transfer that affinity to a different type if I remember right.
>>737857974>>737858460>>737858752>you should have just know that this curve ball boss was going to come and prepared for it!ok well I didnt. I even looked online and a lot of other players had the same issue. Once this boss fight starts you basically locked into it and cannot regroup or equip anything else. If you die you just respawn right before it and thats it.
>>737858957well for starters you're just wrong lmaoyou can change materia of characters who are out of your party and put them on the ones you need to
>>737858754>There is literally a manual in the menu that clearly explains all the mechanics and the game dumps weapons of varying types on you from the very beginning.If the game can't be played intuitively(albeit suboptimally) without reading an extensive manual, that's a problem with the game. Weapons should under no circumstances do 1 damage. I understand doing half or even a quarter damage because the enemy has a resistance against that damage type, but literally doing less than 1% damage is asinine.
>>737859080Until you need to bogus nick nudge. Otherwise youre gonna cringe bit mucus. Tiny, but big us know
>FF8>Thought I was doing okay with junctioning and setting my stats up>Just can not for the life of me defeat Cerberus in the other Garden>Finally the guy that let me borrow the game comes over to visit>Show him>He points out the flaws and explains the junctions a little more>Stands over my shoulder and lets me figure it out>Go to the fight>Clear it no sweat>He said his little brother got stuck at the same partI wish I was still in touch with that guy. At the time I appreciated the help but reflecting on it years later he was incredibly patient and telling me how to do it rather than just yanking the controller away and doing it himself. I hope he's doing well. It's not often you come across a punk ass teenager that is as good with kids as he was.
>>737859080you can swap, you cant add anything. Once this boss fight starts thats it. You respawn right outside the elevator and you can manage your resources for a bit, but this its just walking into the thing. If you didnt know it was coming and prepare for a boss fight, you're fucked.
>>737859290you can change anyone's materia, whether they are in your party or not, at any time in the menujust load your fucking save lmao
>>737855973>A lot of people dropped one of the most successful games everdoubt
>>737859290brother just play FF16 it was made with you in mind
>>737859528no you fucking cant. You can only do that if you have upgrade points or something. If you get to this point of the game and you didnt select the right group and upgrade them enough, you are just fucked. I dont know why its so hard for you guys to just admit this.
>>737856901LoM equipment crafting is a rabbit hole far too deep for any sane person. It didn't help that it took over a decade for self-proclaimed experts to understand how shit like sufur & mercury worked. Like, imagine writing a 300kb guide on this shit without even knowing basic mechanics.
>>737859714>upgrade points or somethingwhat is this bullshitwhat game are you playing
>>737859714you're just wrongthe 2nd materia menu isn't super obvious how to access but it existsyou also cant save your game without being able to adjust equipment/materia before a boss
>>737859119well vagrant story did come out at the tail end of the "read the manual or go fuck yourself" era.
>>737859714when did you first discover that you had mental retardation?
>>737857176how is a reiteration of the original complaint "out of context?"
Most mechanics in Yggdra Union really, shit needed a guide to make clear how Stats actually worked. Turns out the game is way harder at the start because of how stats operate. Nevermind the stats, how the mvp boost worked and who would get it and why. Or the cryptic instructions in the cards, albeit that could be argued as soulful. I'm not even complaining, but I couldn't get any of that shit without being told by a pro guide.
>>737859714There's no upgrade points in the game. Materia is wholly interchangeable among party members. The only thing that restricts this is how much materia you own and the slots available on each party member's equipment. At that point in the game, all party members have weapons and armor that have a minimum 2 slots each. You can genuinely just swap out the materia. In fact, the game lets you unequip all materia from unused party members as an option before this point so you have access to all materia in your inventory, despite the party being split up.
>>737855973Actual fucking nonsense.
>>737858247Such a chaotic presentation of quest unlocks and has errors like you can complete Catchin' Lilipeas and then do Where's Putty? because it's takes both lilipeas and diddle had it! to vanish the questArtifacts give their mana to adjacent tiles, the mana added up from their neighbors (0 through 3 mana) and some tiles come natively with mana and then sequential placement order and distance from home (map difficulty level) all math together to unlock various things such as vendor's stock, spirit coins, monster eggs, etcIf you're after 100% in one run just follow a heavily pre-calculated guide of placements and quest order, there are extremely few map layouts out of every possible permutation that will give you access to everything
>>737859714>>no you fucking cant.>Material > arrange > exchangeDamn that was hard
>>737860423delete this
>>737859829>Like, imagine writing a 300kb guide on this shit without even knowing basic mechanics.And then finding out some of the japanese player's guide information is incorrect overseas due to coding errors>Spears made of cloth because the magic defense stat shifted over to the slashing offence stat
>someone is defending the level scaling in FF8Why? What does it add to the game? I'd love to see an actual argument for it and not just vague smugposting
>>737860423The materia system should be funnier and "glitchier" than it actually is. It's a shame that you can't really link 2 attribute magics to get composite magic and so on.
>>737856058>サンマの幸子>it's yonma
>>737860423>>737860451You can also select character, weapon or armor to move all (character) or the whole row (weapon or armor) of materia at once
>>737860576>
Basically everything in Ogre Battle.
>>737860595Modding scene's got you
>>737860576there are enough unique enemy types and the game is totally linearit exists solely to punish people who want to ignore the games systems and only grind levels
>>737860423I remember showing someone that the item menu in FF6 has detailed equipment stats, elemental affinities, who can use it, what abilities can be used with it, everything.Being able to give Gogo any abilities is also hidden on the status screen.
>>737855554I've played all Xenoblade games and beaten most of them while in the middle of playing 3. Did all the post game content, beat all the super bosses, clocked in over 100 hours for each of them(except for 3 since I'm not finished with that one yet) and I still don't know was Art canceling is. Games have all these different gameplay mechanics and abilities around it and I still don't know what the fuck that is.
>>737860874>it exists solely to punish people whodon't just run from most battles and equip no encounters asap
>>737860576Nobody defended it, I just said it doesn't matter because trying to minimize your level is harder and more effort than just playing the game and gaining whatever levels you would.
>had secret of mana and loved it>emulated sd3 when the first translation came out, with net play with my friend>look at legend of mana>look at guides for legend of mana to understand wtf this is>don't play legend of mana
i only recently found out how to use the skills in dual strike. i was able to beat the game on hard without it, but that took a lot of trial and error, sometimes i spent whole days on maps.
>>737855554
>>737860905the game is super easy even if you level if you use junctions. easier maybe because of the abilities that give you extra stats when you level up
>>737860687This you really need to understand how things work from the start.Skills are divided into types, 2 hand, 1 hand, healing, items etc etc. Every time you use the skill it gains hidden experience. When you get enough experience it goes up a level, giving you a choice of improving an ability a rank or learning the next stronger ability. Higher ranks reduce cost to use them.You want parties all focused on the same ability type because you don't get to select individual actions.Having a party use a bunch of non-lowest rank magic at once does a ridiculously OP aoe that hits every enemy.Everyone should learn healing items. They work better than healing magic.Where the fuck you comes in is that as enemies level as you do so if you spread out your leveling over abilities you aren't focused on you are fucked. Most characters only have a couple ability types but the main character can learn all of them.Equipment on party members upgrades by collecting drops. Getting a drop counts for every character that needs that same drop so it is important to try to keep them all at the same weapon tier.Half the game is hidden behind npc quests. You need to check every area to talk to everyone at every opportunity.Still the only good SaGa game.
>>737859714Upgrade points are only in Remake and even then you can reset your upgrades with Chadley, and in Remake your raw stats barely matter in NG, only Hard Mode will have raw DPS checks for bosses or elite enemies.
>>737855554Minesweeper.
>game made to make you look like a retard then throw literal shit in your face if you mess up even just a little bit
I never understood how the levelling system in oblivion worked. someone told me you were only supposed to level up in certain circumstances or something or you would actually be making yourself weaker. I just used the console to max all my stats and fapped to my big titty mods.
>>737861205Did you never go into the war room and see the different options for solo/dual and skills/no skills?
>>737861717yeah. i just assumed the skills were automatically added on or something. i didn't know i had to select them. i only found out because i watched a speed runner use it.
When I first beat Xenogears when it came out I didn't know there was a system to unlock more combos/abilities/whatever they're called by using different orders of attacks. I just ended up with the first few you started with.
>>737855554Any game where you have to pick out body parts on your enemy to attack. Like, how practical is it to beat the shit out of an opponents left hand when you could just as easily be bashing in heads all day?
>>737855973There were always-accessible ingame help files that clearly explained how it worked in the English version and later revisions of the game.
>>737861561in oblivion enemies scale to your level including what spawns. past a certain level you aren't coming across regular low level enemies but strictly minatours and bandits dressed in daedric armor. but you hardly gain anything from levels, so it can make the game harder. so besides the stupidity of the spawns, it isn't really worth it or fun to level anything up. the level scaling also fucked up unique items. if you got goldbrand at a low level, the bonuses it attches scale to w/e level you are and never fix themselves. so if you get it early, you are stuck with the early version stats, making it useless for later game when you're level 25+not leveling keeps things balanced at least, but theres probably mods to fix all that shit these days
>>737861805That makes more sense, especially since the first couple are stuff like "do more damage" and "take less damage".
>>737855735I find this is the case with jobs and skills in Tactics. It’s really not a complex system, but the ui and sub menus are so fucking unintuitive to manage them.
>>737860576>What does it add to the gameWhat does it subtract? It's just a different, experimental way of doing things.
>>737862184It subtracts levels as a meaningful mechanic for one.
Firzt run I was 2dumb to realize the place was a a holyground (hp damage = karma at every step, and I was running max karma because expiation IS FOR PUSSIES) so I just cleared and mapped the area with an overlevelled Theatrical Star with hp regen and items
>>737862330How so? The draws you can get from higher leveled monsters easily offsets the negligible strength difference (which if your junctions are good, you won't even notice).
>>737862537>draws>from monstersjust play the gay card game bro
>>737862602valkyria chronicle? that game pissed me so much with all its bullshit customization mechanics and hundreds of non descriptive traits. perfect example of wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle
>>737862673its even easier to use drops, like kill a few fish for water or a few dinos for quakeyou can get even more magic super fast if you use the card ability to turn them into cards because you get the drops+cards.enemies you turn into cards also don't give exp if that's what you care about
>>737855554I've been playing this the last couple days and I get it besides linking. What the fuck does All do??? Does linking the same materia make it more powerful? Does linking it with other materia do anything at all?
>>737860890Art Cancelling is what you use another right after you activated one, this will boost the recovery rate of other Arts in cooldown. At first you will recovery just a bit and eventually you will recover enough that you can chain Arts almost infinitely without swapping blades. I might be recalling wrong but in XB2 if you Art Cancel correctly you should see like a little flash and the "clock" animation will advance faster. There's a similar technique which is Auto Cancel, in simple terms is when you use an Art at the right timing of an Auto Attack for similar effects.
>>737855554I didn't even know there was a charge attack in Trials on Mana until my second playthrough.
>>737862919>What the fuck does All do???When you use the ability in combat it affects all targets a certain number of times per battle based on the rank. It's one of the best materia in the game for numerous reasons.
>>737862919All lets you cast magic on <All> enemies or allies on the field depending the intended effect, and the level is the number of times it functions that way, you can turn it off by hitting what was either R1 or L1 for PS1.
>>737862919All allows a material to target everybody, also I remember it being sold for a shit load of gils when maxed out
>>737861541This one is funny because the shit at your face mechanic can be exploited to expand a cool bro's lifespan. It's still super mystic going blind. This case in particular was so obscure for years, no guide got it 100% right and I don't think that was on purpose. While it's true that the datamine effort took the veil covering it, the many layered mechanics involved in the evolution process of a digimon are still very cool.
>>737855554Dark cloud 2's weapon synthesis. Put items directly into weapons is easy and makes sense, but using weapons as material to upgrade other weapons didn't make sense to me. It's kind of important to upgrade weapons like that to be strong enough for the final dungeon so I never beat the game until later on when I figured out how it worked.>>737857461There's a tablet that explains it early on. See a glowing blue eye in the background? Something in the room zaps you when you hit it. No eyeball? feel free to punch all the walls. The area where you get zapped without hitting anything is mentioned on another tablet but even if you miss it it's not hard to figure out you get zapped no matter what.
>>737862673Point is whatever stats are increased in monsters are utterly negligible if you've actually leveled up yourself and whatever drops/occasional draw you get from it more than makes up for it.
>>737863016>>737863021>>737863025Oh that makes sense. So what about other links? Will they be blue too or can you mix others around?
>>737863025Pretty sure it's because of the amount of AP required to max it is the highest, and for most materia, the gil value comes from how much AP it has, only thing that doesn't net you any money is summon materia.
>>737863137Blue materia usually only works with Green materia, I don't think it works with Yellow materia. Maxing out a materia makes a duplicate copy of it though, so you can get multiple "Added Effect" materias or even Elementals that way.
>>737863132the point is it makes leveling a mechanic you want to avoid. FFT had this problem too.
>>737855554Like what? Taking a screenshot? Yeah faggot it seems you never figured that one out
>>737863137not sure I get what you're saying but links only matter for blue materia + green (magic) or red materia (summon), and not every combination do something. like All doesnt do anything on a summon materia. also if I remember correctly the order doesn't matter, all that matter is that its linked or not
>>737855554Materia was fine but I'm pretty sure I just completely spaced out in the Junction tutorial for FF8 or failed to grasp that it was the pivotal character-building aspect of the game and got to like Deling City before I even engaged with it.
>>737855554Tales of Zestiria's equipment bullshit.
>>737861561Might be confusing some of this with Morrowind but, you gain a level when you've gained 10 skill points total combined in any of your major skills. The stat bonus on level up depends on how many skill points you've gained in skills for that stat divided by 2. So you can gain a level when you've gained 10 skill points but you actually need to gain 10 skill points in each stat you want to level to get a 5 instead of a 3. This is obviously extremely annoying to try to keep track of; upgrading tons of skills you aren't using and more than likely having skills you don't want to use at all as your major ones. Best to just get mod that gives 5 bonus automatically and call it a day.The biggest problems with the level scaling enemies is that Kvatch at the start of the game has a lot of NPC helpers but they don't scale so if you don't do it right away they are useless against a large group of enemies. Trying to do the Oblivion gate right away can also be difficult and waiting will change the enemies into ones that reflect melee attacks making it even worse. After that I think it actually gets easier.
>>737855735It's 100x better than the fucking remake's UIHoly FUCK what were they thinking with that weapon upgrade screen
Kingdom come deliverance's combat (the first one). I've won the tournament and did all of those hunt bandits/cumans quests, but I still don't understand what I'm doing. Enemies run all around me while I hit the parry button, sometimes I lightly tap them and other times I stab them right in the face for an instant kill.
>>737855735Are you underage? Do you not understand UIs if they're not presented in the form of mobile UI?
>>737861561What the other anons said. I had a tally chart for how many skill ups I would gain for certain stats and after levelling up, but before resting I went to trainers to push the stat up amounts to the next breakpoints. Late game good gear is what's important though. I kind of loved how powerful quest rewards got later on. Late game I reflected 80%ish of damage so I was essentially immortal.
>>737855554Materia might be one of the simplest and most intuitive RPG systems ever? I understood it when I was like 8.For me it's the formation grid in Persona 1. It's never explained ingame and whenever I fucked around with it nothing seemed to change. I still don't know how it works or what advantages can come from it, I beat the entire game just fine without touching it.
>>737858254>Nobody is talking about doing convoluted level 1 runs. Just shut the fuck up and learn your place. You're not smart enough to pull off the condescending act. Remember that and avoid embarrassing yourself like this.
>>737855973No idea how it worked as a 12 yyrold but by college I loved the freedom. I wish other games coppied. Even the remake you can't poison your weapon.
>>737855554Every single Sting game. I got 20 minutes into Knights in the Nightmare's tutorial before I shut it off.
>>737860015>Most mechanics in Yggdra Union reallyseriously? the fuck? i clocked most of what i needed to know to beat the game by the time yggdra was gone, i had no idea people actually struggled with it like that
>>737862730Valkry Chronicals had do much potential just yo turn into a shit Korea soap opera. The one franchise id buy if I could. I swear I could save it.
>>737855554Can we at least all agree learning skills from equipment like FFT GBA or FF9 is by far the worst system of all.
>>737862602Big number good, I think. I was kind of bumbling through it too.
Risk>>737867072Being able to junction status to auto attack was amazing to me at the time. As well as being able to tailor your elemental resistances without having to use specialized accessories.
>>737856521>>737856648Yes, always walk in triangles, first character goes right, second goes left and third makes the triangle complete. You will obliterate anything. There are tutorials for it. It's as easy as it gets. The game has like ng+10 and you can beat the hardest difficulty just fine with the above-mentioned algorithm.
>>737867264A man of taste
>>737867371Square should make a game about your triangular tactics. Maybe a midevil trpg?
>>737856729Fucking retard
>>737857373kinda sucks how if you ever make a typo you get called ESL nowadays
>>737863194some blues work with yellows and its kind of opfor something basic you can pair added cut materia to steal so you can get an improvised mug, or when your steal levels up, you can mug with it and get two attacks.the most autistic shit is mime countering 8 times to do 8 omnislashes at once or whatever
>>7378673713 people are always going to make a triangle.
>>737856414vargant story is retarded for having a limited inventory. in a game with different types of armor and enemies that are not vulnerable to some weapons, you cant just limit my inventory to carry a set amount. how the fuck am i supposed to know what enemies are going to appear beforehand? just so fucking retarded. i dropped it right after the cellar when i only did 1 damage to the human enemies. forcing me to reload because i didnt have the right weapons with me is just stupid. who cares about realism in a videogame, seriously. its not why i play games
>>737855554Triple Triad and the junction system in FF8. I didn't understand it as a kid and still don't to this day.
>>737867932its just an equipment systemyou equip GF. the GF has various abilities, including the ability to allow you to equip magic to a stat. for an example lets say strength.now you set one of your magics to strength and it will increase your strength stat by a value based on the particular spell and the amount of it that you have in your magic inventory, with the maximum power being at 100.very simple stuff really. usually stronger magic=better stats but there's also themes to it, like protect having good defense value or healing magic being best to raise HP or spirit. there's also things like element attack/defense or status attack/defense but they aren't really important... status defenses maybe.
>>737868384Man that already feels like a lot to keep track of. I would've rather the design was as simple as equipping a GF and levelling up that GF alongside your character and the stats of that gf also impact the character.
>>737868661Just use Auto. Picking which magic goes where only really matters near the end of the game when you can junction to almost all stats and need to prioritize which one gets Ultima.
>>737855554FF7 is actually better if you don't understand the mechanics. If you have experience with RPGs and build your characters well then the game is braindead easy. It's probably more fun if you're retarded and barely scraping by in important fights.
>>737855554FF8's draw system till much much later in my life.
>>737859119You can play it suboptimally just fine without the manual. Besides all the obvious ways of not doing 1 damage, chains steadily increase in strength each hit. Even if you miss it steadily goes from 0 to 1 and you can win purely from chaining. If you're going to complain about not understanding the deeper systems and mechanics of an RPG, a genre entirely based around reading and planning, then also complain about any information you want to know being readily accessible, that's a problem with you. And nothing about your arbitrary assumptions of how games "should" be changes that.
>>737868661it's complicated but it's also 90% ignorable. put curaga on hp, quake on attack, and tornado on speed and you are set for the entire game. you can do this before you even get rinoa in the party if you also get the ability that turns cards into items and items into magic.
>>737860576Level scaling allows the game to be consistently challenging, while still rewarding you with more ways to get stronger by updating the magic you can have access to. It then also adds replayability when you see the different ways you can break it by working around the level scaling and finding how different enemies are affected by it, or by maximizing how hard it can get. Level scaling is only bad with linear level systems that don't increase your options as you get stronger, where your strength should then rely on how you use the extra tools you have access to. The sort of person that thinks challenge in a game is punishment should not be playing games.
>>737855554Unlimited SaGa. The Elder God Tier of what the fuck how does anything work
>>737870402>Level scaling allows the game to be consistently challengingThe level scaling in FF8 is nothing but a punishment to the player. Enemies scale significantly harder with levels than the player does.>while still rewarding you with more ways to get stronger>rewarding youYou know someone is desperate to defend FF8 when they try to call leveling rewarding when it's objectively detrimental to the player.>b-b-but not everyone is going to meta game!Irrelevant. Even if you don't use the refining tricks you're still better off staying as low level as possible.FF8's weird scaling system is objectively bad for the player. You never want to do it. It does nothing but punish the player.
>>737855915why does this shit never go on a good sale on steam, nobody is buying it, it should be $5
>>737870517Actually hilarious how you couldn't even read the rest of the post which directly calls out everything you said.
>>737870628>calls outYou didn't call out anything. All you did was attempt to handwave criticism by preemptively saying "well actually this shitty system is a good thing because it makes the game harder!"Nope. Doesn't work that way champ. If someone wants to make the game more challenging they have plenty of options. The fact that playing the game "normally" is something you'd consider a challenge run speaks volumes about how colossally Square fucked up with the game. You have no argument. Concession accepted.
>>737870824But the difficulty increase is balanced by the player also getting access to new, stronger spells (And therefore stats)
>>737870402level scaling is just a band aid fix for the kind of player who runs from every fight and then complains that bosses are too hard.
>>737871016level has nothing to do with access to abilities and spells. that's entirely based on game progress. the easiest you can make the game is to only use the card ability to kill enemies without gaining exp and then using diablo's encounter none skill so you never level up. you will still have all of the powerful abilities and incredibly high stats, but bosses will be weak as shit.
>>737870824Meanwhile, in your very post.>b-b-but not everyone is going to meta game!When that didn't even address a single part of what I said. Not only are you inventing strawmen to attack, you are then hurting yourself in confusion while covering your eyes screaming "I'm right I'm right". Remarkable.
>>737871016>balancedNo it's not. That would imply the difficulty curve between levels is linear which it isn't. Power objectively shifts toward the enemy and it only gets worse the higher level you go because you're able to max out several stats long before level 100 which means enemies benefit even more as they continue to close the gap.For example there are numerous enemies who will straight up one-shot you if you're high level and you aren't using one of the best junctions for Vit/Spi.>>737871254>citing a fallacy without understanding itYet another concession. A little too easy but I accept. Stay retarded.
>>737870432I kind of feel like the PS2 era is when a bunch of Jap companies put on their retard hats with their rpgs.
>holstered weapon means the pipboy button is a context sensitive button>its sprint>spent hundreds of hours of walking the wasteland the slowest way possible>learn this after finishing playing the game
>>737871492Whoops, forgot: fallout 3 and new vegas
>>737871175Level affects enemies which in turn changes the magic you can draw from them. It also affects what test you can take for your SeeD rank. Parroting the line is fun and all but it doesn't convey anything about how the game actually works or how it can be played.>>737871337It's almost like the game is designed around levels not being the sole factor for strength, which is entirely the reason level scaling exists in the first place and what makes the variable challenge possible an interesting system. He continues to squeal because what he doesn't read can't hurt him, ironic.
>>737871540there's no reason to ever draw magic from enemies when you can get it way earlier from refining items. seed rank is pointless and only affects how much money you get which you don't really need. I beat the game at level 16 or something and was never short on magic or items.
>>737871801>levels have nothing to do with access to spells>ok they do but
>>737871540>It's almost like the game is designed around levels not being the sole factor for strengthIrrelevant to the point. Levels are overall bad for the player and good for the enemy. This is a fact which can not be disputed.>which is entirely the reason level scaling exists in the first placeFalse.>and what makes the variable challenge possibleThere are plenty of different kinds of challenges you can do for 8. "Play the game as the developers intended and get the average new player experience" is not a challenge run.Concession remains accepted.
>>737872842Saying objectively incorrect things and then calling them fact is a strange approach, but I would expect nothing less at this point, especially when you show just how fundamentally you misunderstand anything regarding how games even work. All it took is a non-standard progression system and the idea of playing a game to actually interact with the mechanics to completely break your mind.>"Play the game as the developers intended and get the average new player experience" is not a challenge run.Has never been stated or even implied to the contrary. You can't even distinguish the very concept of being challenged, the default intended state of playing a videogame, from the framing of a "challenge run". Which only shows how mentally challenged you are.
>>737873259>Saying objectively incorrect things and then calling them fact is a strange approachStopped reading there. Everything I've stated is objectively fact which can not be disputed. Concession remains accepted.
>>737856000I beat the game once.This is what I did>experiment with the system a bit>"spending time drawing and junctioning seems pointless until you can access high level magic">junction whatever into random stats>steamroll the game without engaging witht he mechanics>on the garden battle draw 99 flare for every party member from picrel nigger>junction into attack>spam attack for thousands of damage until the game is over
>>737866720I thought this one was pretty intuitive, battles take place on a grid made of tiles, both your party and enemy attacks hit a certain number of tiles close or away from them so you can manoeuvre your party round the grid to best suit thatHave someone just healing your team? Tuck them away in the corner so no attacks can hit themUsing mainly gun attacks? Put them at the back so they can still hit most of the enemy team, as they can’t hit tiles close to themA party member with an attack that hits a wide number of tiles can go to the left or right while a more narrow hitting member, or someone tankier, can go in the middle
>>737855973Junctions were hampered by the optimal strat being to just never cast anything and use spells purely for stats. Also the level scaling didn't help.
>>737872842>Levels are overall bad for the player and good for the enemy. This is a fact which can not be disputed.Please demonstrate this "fact".
>>737863115Every time this game gets discussed people gaslight each other pretending the mechanics were perfectly clear and even a kid should understand how to succesfully evolve your digipals.
>>737873781That's what I had assumed but if I remember right most of the enemies in the game just use magic attacks that can hit you from anywhere anyway making it all a bit pointless. Perhaps I did understand it but came to that conclusion and was confused why it was in the game at all.
>>737873846Already did. Power shifts more toward the enemy the more you level. There is zero incentive to gain exp because it does nothing but harm you.>b-b-but challengeIf somebody wants to feel challenged there are numerous ways to go about that without engaging with the terrible leveling system.
>>737873951>"I ALREADY DID!!!">Baseless claim>No proofWant to try again?
>>737873846He is right though. You can hit the stat caps at level one so leveling up only makes you weaker as enemies scale up.
Oh okay so you're just being retarded and denying reality because you realize you've been backed into a corner and don't have any counterarguments. Got it. Concession remains accepted.
>>737867235Nah I like that system.Golden Sun uses it too
>>737860890>Art cancelingYou cancel arts into other arts to speed up animations. It's literally in the name. If you've beat all of the games and DLCs you've almost certainly done it
>>737874047>Hasn't proved his claims to be true>Now he's too scared to reply to meNobody ever won an argument by running away, scared.If you are refusing to participate in the discussion, you lose.
>>737855554What shader is that
>>737873512Still hilariously predictable, from the very beginning if you tried to read instead of being so desperate to play the enlightened bitch you could have actually learned something without just embarrassing yourself. It's already been listed the ways levels are good for the player. They're simply also "good" for the enemy, because the game expects you to use the systems and actually *play* the game. Therein lies the disconnect, you see "enemy gets stronger as you do so you have to utilize mechanics to stay ahead" and short-circuit because the idea of enjoying the game for what it actually is is alien to you, so the only way you can cope is in constant denial, playing at objectivity when your view is anything but.
>>737867264Beat it a few months ago. From what I recall high risk = higher damage for that chain but once the chain ends attacks are less likely to hit and you take more damage if your risk is high. What that means is you want to keep the rhythm chain of the weapon up to maximize damage but once you stop the chain by missing you use an item to reduce you risk so you can hit again. At times you want might want to purposely stop an atack chain because the risk stack multiplies and you don't want it to be too high and the enemy attacks. The game is pretty nice about risk since it throws items at you to lower it.
>>737874158>Still hilariously predictableYes, facts tend to be predictable because facts don't change. Concession remains accepted. Thanks for making this so easy.
>>737857687There's really someone defending a guy who can't beat a JRPG boss that even toddlers in the 90s can beat.
>>737874073I don't mind those systems but whether you're talking about Djinn or Psynergy items Golden Sun handles it a bit different. In those games you need to equip something and use it long enough to learn the ability it comes with, while Golden Sun Djinn is more like changing job based on how many are set, with a full shift of what Psynergy you have access to.
>defending ff8's objectively terrible leveling and junction systemslol. lmao even.
>>737867235No. That's legitimately a good system. Makes a lot of otherwise boring gear pieces more interesting because they come with a skill. Some games implement it better than others but the core idea is great.
i dont remember ever dropping a game because i couldnt understand a mechanic, but i sure as hell have dropped a game that i wasnt having fun with because of a mechanic i didnt know existed
>>737874340No, you literally learn weapon skills from using the weapons for a long time.I just beat Dark Dawn a month or so ago.
>>737862602Din's Shop as a whole, by extension.
>>737857687>First half of the game introduces a dozen robotic enemy type and their weakness to Thunder spells.>Too retarded to switch over materia to use thunder spells.Do you shove round things into square holes too?
>>737874420That's not how it worked in the first two games and probably why anon is confused. No one played dark dawn.
>>737855973Almost everyone I knew who played FF8 completely ignored junctions and relied on summoning GFs to beat the game.As long as you equip GFs and level them up, it's easy to beat the whole game without using anything other than summons.My friend was like that and I saw no magic junctioned to any stat. Once I found the strongest magic and threw it on STR, he was in awe when his normal attacks went from 90 damage to 3000.
>>737874407>Zestiria equipment fusion.Now you just had to go and remind me.
>>737874513Yeah, that sounds like how I would have played it as a kid. Summons are cool so of course kid me would have focused on them. Never did play FF8 back then though.
>>737874420Oh I forgot about that system. It's still different though, you don't get to keep the weapon skills when using other weapons, it's just you need to use the weapon for long enough to be allowed to get its unleashes.>>737874495I actually liked Dark Dawn quite a lot even though it was a bit disappointing and fumbled what should have been a lot of easy wins.
>>737874290How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast this morning?
>>737874670Not hungry at all. Because I eat dinner at that time instead.
>>737874607>you don't get to keep the weapon skills when using other weaponsYes, you do. That's the point of mastering the skill.
>>737861863>the strongest move in the game is Headbutt, a move that does a shit ton of damage and almost always knocks an enemy out so you can do professional wrestling submission moves. Coming to this game straight after playing WWE No Mercy almost revive my interest in professional wrestling.
>>737855554in FF7 they auto-equip the first two materia, fire and lightning, so I assumed the game auto-equipped everything you picked up. I got all the way to Nibilheim without equipping a single weapon or materia before the enemies got too strong and I figured out how to use the menu.
For me it was stacking a gorillion -HP% magic materia. Never did realize you were supposed to stack HP+ materia at some point. Still beat the game but I was squishy as fuck.
>>737875017Let's see, I first played FF7 when I was 9 years old? And I had the same assumption as you. I didn't figure out that you could mess with Materia loadouts until, I think, Shinra Tower. And I didn't understand you could exchange Materia between party members until way further in the game, so the elevator fight to escape Shinra Tower took me literal days. Because I could only attack with Barret and Red who came equipped with Fire
>>737874941No you can't, it would sort of make sense if it did but the only thing mastering one weapon gives you after unequipping it is a shorter time mastering other weapons of the same type. Weapons just come with multiple unleashes in Dark Dawn, and some weapons just happen to share the same ones while others get unique ones. You can't, for example master the Sol Blade then equip a longsword and do Megiddos. If this makes absolutely no sense and only serves as a way to timegate unleashes for no clear reason except to slightly inconvenience weapon choices, that's because it is the case. I still have no idea why they added it, you still have a chance to get any of the other, potentially weaker unleashes when mastered.
>>737875451>"you don't get to keep the weapon skills when using other weapons">descibes how you get to keep weapon skills
>>737875716You're not keeping the skills in the typical sense and certainly not like the other games or what's normally described by that kind of system. If Sword A has Big Slash and Sword B has Huge Slice, you cannot ever use Big Slash when wielding Sword B even after you've mastered Sword A. Granted you only have to master that sword once and can use them again if you swap back to it, but 90% of the time that makes no sense because they're just weaker weapons with weaker unleashes.
>>737876035I understand how the game works and my description of how it works was correct.Why are you so upset about this?
>>737855554what's so hard to understand about>equip magic materia>attack stats go down>magic stats go upit's all + and -
>>737857687just use items retard, takes like 6 or 7 grenades to kill both phases
>>737875017I played through most of Super Mario RPG without equipment outside of Mario's hammer since it was equipped by a tutorial.
>>737855554I was one of those. Since I played FF7 when I was a kid I had no idea how to use the Blue materia. I just went with whatever increased strength and literally beat the game with 99% normal attacks, Limit Breaks and healing. Then I played it again when I was older and I was blown away but all the shit I missed out and that didn't understand because I was a retard. Same with FF8. It's a shame they went back to make brainless games with FF9.
>>737876813>using itemsBut what if I need those grenades later?
>>737876927Ironically kid you actually played in a meta way. At least towards the end of the game roided normals are far better than magic(and even summons because of how long animations are).
>>737876639Now you're just trying much too hard.
>>737856840Tutorials are a fucking chore.
>>737856085Exactly, 8fags will tell you that running from fights and exploiting the card minigame is how you're supposed to play the game. And right on cue here comes an 8fag to cope and seethe in defence of this shitty game: >>737857093
>>737867250Eh, it’s a bit confusing but not nearly as bad as other things in this thread
>>737874513Until you get to the Adel fight and realize that Rinoa will die if you try to cheese it with summons.
>>737877038I'm not trying at all.Being right comes naturally to me.
>>737873937Oh yeah it becomes pointless once full hitting arena spells become the norm but that doesn’t mean its a confusing system just pointless in the latter half of the game
>>737878352hahahahaha fucking based and same anon.
>>737860423I beat the game without knowing like half the features lmao.My favorite Materia (barring the Summons) were Ultima, Comet, Barrier, and Time, with the latter two paired with All Materia. Great game.I almost screwed myself during the Sephiroth battle, though. I didn’t know about the two-party battle scheme where you had to destroy parts from both sides of Sephiroth’s body to access his core. Too many Megalixirs wasted.
>>737879793ok
>>737855593If you are smarter enough to understand Pokemon in a deeply competitive level, you are smarter enough to understand most jrpg's.
The first time I played through Bayo 1 I didn't get dodge offsetting at all
>>737877367how? what was so hard about him? i thought it was pathetic and boring compared to the remake because he played just like an average enemy
>>737879931>If you are smarter enoughSMART.If you are SMART enough.ESL's really seem to struggle with this one
>>737880021I'm sorry for my mistake, i'll avoid it in the future.
>>737880079Don't avoid it, that's cowardly. Learn from your mistakes and do better.
>>737880106I'll avoid the mistake, not the word.
>>737855554i would say FFXI as a whole was hard to understand as an american kid in the 00s.the crafting systems alone were ridiculous to figure out and involved the days of the in-game week and moon phases and shit, even playing the game again a decade later there's still so much mystery to it.
>>737880435Excellent.
>>737855554Which is funny to me because Junctioning inherently clicked with me and I spent 20 hours playing TT just to get super busted in mid game. But Materia, which honestly is better at rewarding the player for milestones/exploration I just found super boring.
>>737874513>>737878265I played it like this and managed to get to the Raijin Fujin boss fight in the coastal town when I hit a wall and had to look up how the game actually worked
>>737855554>materia system>harddo retards really? >>737855735dumbest take of the day.
>>737855554I was an exceptionally dumb kid in general because I had ADD and didn't bother reading everything or didn't absorb anything the game would tell me
I use trainers to get one hit kills and just skip through every fight the fastest possible in the trails series.
>>737855973While I was disappointed in the junction crap I still played through the game. You press enough buttons long enough things sort themselves out. I never understood it but didn't need to. Sometimes you just gotta take a dogs approach to things.
>every piece of equipment comes with a set skill and up to 3 random skills along with focusing on either one stat or a split between two stats>your stats at the time you level determines how your stats grow so if you want a specific stat to be high at base you would wear equipment that prioritizes that stat>enemies only drop items by their type, their level influences what tier of item drops, you can manipulate the enemy level by playing on a higher difficulty or using modifiers you find by playing the game to influence the skills on equipment in exchange for raising the enemy level>holding too many items lowers your drop rate>the skills show up on a skill board and you can get bonus skills by aligning the basic skills in certain ways, this is how you get the good stuff>but since the bulk of your skills are from random slots you need to fuse equipment with the same name to mix those skills together to get what you want>fusing skills follows a set of rules that, while the game does explain how it works, is still a bit vague and can't be viewed again in game until you reach the point where you can view cutscenes again>also what difficulty you played on the most and are currently playing on determines if the random skills have a chance to double or triple>but the rate of the skills doubling is extremely low unless you offer up blessed equipment with the skill you want in the first slot>in order to bless an item you need to fuse it 10 times, but in order to get the maximum benefit you need to offer up a blessed item that was fused 99 times>the easiest way to do this is by using equipment you get in the final dungeon and post game dungeon which has horrible stats but can be fused with any item of the same type>but getting over a hundred copies of the same item type is still a long process, so you need to sell items of that type to equipment shops to allow them to restock that item which you can then order copies of using character field support skills
>>737856729>>737855554I remember grinding my ass off but still getting stuck in this boss, finally someone at my school told me I should have the Barrier materia. I was locked in Temple of the Ancients so I had to replay the entire game up to this point and was paranoid enough to have every materia and equipment up to that point. I beat his ass so easy it made me cry a little.
Its always interested me to revisit FF6-8 and how there was a very clear escalating idea of "we want bespoke rpg characters for story purposes, but want you to create your own classes" and 9 was a throwback but 10 and 12 tried to expand on this and every system ultimately comes down to "how much unga versus how much magical bunga?">Espers have effects like "10% mp increase on level up">Materia has stat increases that effect things like turn order regardless of level>Junctioning lets you activity alter stats and add effects by equipping magic to said stats>The Sphere Grid is a map of stat upgrades and skills to unlock at your own choosing>The License grid offers everyone everything but you choose where you begin and what direction to take it inBut it feels like they never really cemented on what they wanted it to be beyond "use your favourite characters but still have a healer".Personally i think junctioning is the most interesting at baseline but the level scaling and consumable spells feel like a strange way to balance constantly finding new spells or tiers of spells with having players not simply get the best stuff early and minmaxing the fun out of it.
>>737873825This, I beat the entire game just spamming Attack, GFs, Meltdown and Limits
>>737855554poise
Fighting game installs. I try to combo with a big brain but I'm a retard and I try to mash buttons and it never works.
I still have no idea what biorhythm or whatever the fuck its called does in this game
>>737883078It's a byproduct of how jrpgs work, especially the earlier ones. No matter what you do the most important thing is killing the enemy before they kill you, so everything goes towards either helping you kill things faster or reduce the time it takes for an enemy to kill you. I personally think it's better to look at the systems from early to mid-game instead of the end result because there's always going to be an optimal setup when you have everything while in the early parts you need to use what you have to get by unless you want to sit around and grind.
>>737857093AND it gives a reason to utilize enemy's magic against them. That's why there is the option to directly cast when drawing. No "punishment" or using resources involved.Even FF8 fans fail to mention this. Truly the design was TOO clever for the JRPG audience.
>>737884478Not quite. Cast-drawing against enemies not only can fail (moot point after you level your Magic stat a bit) but the strength of spells is somewhat randomized compared to stocking and then casting.On the other hand, most bosses pack some sort of buff or debuff spell that is effective against them.>>737883843You know when you add 2 + 2 and it's always 4? Biorhythm just adds another layer of randomness and acts as a minor incentive to cycle units but it's not impactful enough in most cases to not use your trained and better units.
>>737857093>>737884478Before I respond to this. Do you guys actually think the enemies being the same level as you makes the game harder?
>>737884938>You know when you add 2 + 2 and it's always 4? Biorhythm just adds another layer of randomness and acts as a minor incentive to cycle units but it's not impactful enough in most cases to not use your trained and better units.oh okay. thanks mate.
>>737884962Some enemies get significantly stronger but unless you are completely neglecting your junctions and leveling up like crazy, this will not make a difference other than the odd tiered up spell you might be hit with.But it matters little, players are averse to any kind of curtailing of powerleveling ever since the 80s crpg days. Level scaling is just one of the things that are widely hated on a principle, not because it actually makes things harder or worse.
>>737873923I don't think people really did that. At best you just have some simpler to get evolutions like Greymon but no one was 100% sure of anything, not even the most hardcore players that already had knowledge of "care mistakes" because it wasn't clear until the datamine what actually was acknoledged by the game as one.
>>737874409Valkyrie Profile? just asking
It's difficult to even call these shit opinions "bait", because it's entirely in line with modern /v/ to be so fucking stupid you don't understand something as simple as the materia or junction systems.
>>737885092Maybe in the absolute hardest difficulties a character with worst biorythm versus a strong boss at its peak bio level could translate into a noticeable effect.Fatigue was a much better way to plan around using units and by halfway through Thracia you would have enough S-Drinks to use your favorite units anyway. But Thracia is such a fucking oddball game that everybody won't touch with a tentpole, except for the most hardcore fans.
>>737885094So you are a midwit criticizing midwits.Level scaling makes levels into a pointless metric and removes any and all challenge the game could have. When your argument against non-level scaling system is “well the player can just grind” then you’re not actually arguing honestly.The only flaw FF8 has is the level scaling and it is a very striking flaw
>>737855973>junction>complicatedWhats so hard to understand? junction a magic that gives certain bonus to an attribute slot. the more you have the more stats.
>>737884938>Cast-drawing against enemies not only can fail (moot point after you level your Magic stat a bit)I didn't remember this. Maybe it's because I used designated spell casters and thus had fewer failures.
>>737874513>As long as you equip GFs and level them up, it's easy to beat the whole game without using anything other than summons.Then am I retarded? I leveled to 100 and struggled like hell at the final wave of bosses. When I found out that being low level was easy mode I figured 100 most be on hard mode. I was like 14 or some at the time it came out so I don't know if leveling to 100 made any difference at a certain point.
>>737885386I don't care either way.Older JRPGs inspired by Dragon Quest were centered around the idea of killing a lot of mobs each new zone so you can keep up with the power spikes.I remember you had to do quite a bit of grinding here and there in Breath of Fire 1 & 2.FF8 tried to get away from it, like SaGa did with things like BR (BattleRank), so just hard grinding to overlevel things wasn't enough.Getting more levels in FF8 would help you just in the sense stronger draw spells would become available and your juction system could keep up.But today probably everyone who still plays FFVIII knows how to refine Curagas out of Tents and 100 Waters out of Fish Fins just leaving Balamb. Not to mention card refining.
>>737885495To be more precise, any drawable spell had an innate "resistance", no matter if you were draw-casting or draw-stocking. Sometimes you would receive the "draw failed" message.But IIRC your magic stat was the one used to roll the difficulty of drawing and as soon as every character had M-Junct and a decent spell junctioned, it was a non-issue.And when Draw-Casting there was a sort of randomizing value so your draw-cast Curaga or Flare sometimes had a wonky final effect number compared to if they were cast from your stock.
>>737885626None of the games you mentioned required grinding unless you think being under-leveled means you cannot win, which is exactly what a midwit would say.
>>737885806That's bullshit, but I believe you. Even exp tables and gold drops were changed in re-releases.
>>737882137>Zesty equipment systemI still think graces is worse.
>>737885860I am not talking about re-releases. Are you the type of person who thinks you can’t beat the rby or frlg e4 without being level 50 or something?If you’re really gonna cite creativity and strategy then blaming grinding is just hypocrisy, considering being at the same level is only harder than being overleveled. Moreover i simply hate it when someone thinks they can have a level progression system without it actually mattering, its like talking to an actual retard.
>>737882137I quit this game when I saw spears dropping still even when out of fucking nowhere that redhead replaced the girl they were quite literally shilling prerelease with figurines and everything.Like what the fuck were they thinking?
>>737879805>I didn’t know about the two-party battle scheme where you had to destroy parts from both sides of Sephiroth’s body to access his core>he doesn't know it's actually a three-party battle schemeI hope everyone gets to experience it and how useless it was.
>>737888183You wouldn't realistically get to setup everyone properly unless you were a turbo autist materia grinder, I usually just let the leftover group die and fight normally.
>>737888270I stopped leveling past 50-ish on purpose everytime I replayed because I wanted to evade the multi-party battle.There really isn't any requirements to level past 50-ish anyways because you do consistent 9999 damage and have 9999 hp and mp. The superbosses can be killed with relatively easy strategies, so raw stats are pretty much redundant after you hit 40+ on Disc 3.
>>737888685I used to fight every random battle out of fear of being underleveled and due to backtracking/exploring you can get vastly overleveled instead in FFVII, that's the only reason I knew about this encounter without looking up a guide.
>>737855593dude all the other JRPGs are so braindead compared to Pokemon. I have played a fuck ton.The only one harder than Pokemon is SMT.
>>737888889FF7 is better with an encounter toggle because it makes the game both more convenient and harder, which is a rare combination
>>737888685in FF5 is this also the case because job class mastery is more important than leveling up anyway.
>>737888889>>737889012I never had the problem of being clearly overleveled by just playing through the game and fighting every encounter. I usually just use magic paired with ALL until I get the ultimate weapons and run through the game without any issue, finish the superbosses and still get the single encounter.If you know where to go, the game is fantastically paced for a casual experience, aside from the Demon Wall obviously.
>>737888996As a retard kid I used to overuse my starter backed by a couple of leveled mons the game gave you like Snorlax or Red Gyarados (not to mention the occasional legendary like one of the birds or Lugia) and it utterly broke the game.Last time I played like a sane person leveling a 6 mon team I reached Pokemon Diamond Cinthia at level 50 or so and got rekt.
>>737886493Yeah Graces wasn't much better. On paper it seems easier, you get shards, dualize them to gear to increase stats, and extract with two pieces to get a gem and another time to forge. Graces falls apart the moment you try the higher difficulties and realize how important accuracy is compared to every other stat to the point where enemies won't stagger if it's not high enough, so instead you dualize for the most accuracy on top of dealing with absurdly expensive prices without an easy way to farm the millions of gald you'll need to dualize that high. This isn't even getting into how you flat out can't get certain shard qualities at specific areas and once you find your desired loop of qualities you're also fighting against a low drop rate since the enemies are probably a lower level than you.
I've beaten Stranger of Paradise multiple times without getting good at parrying or chain cancels.
>>737885094>Level scaling is just one of the things that are widely hated on a principle, not because it actually makes things harder or worse.yes, i do hate it on principle, the principle is that power gains that i've clawed from the game shouldn't be met with magic nonsense that makes the entire world stronger. it's a dumb system that's antithetical to the entire purpose of progression in an rpg: that you get stronger over time.the correct response to player power gains is to have difficult challenges designed into the flow of the game that the progression helps the player surmount, not to just scale every enemy in the game off the player's current level.god i fucking hate level scaling.
>>737890049I think it would make sense if zones had level brackets. This way you could be both under and overleveled while also maintaining a spectrum of challenge in case of exploring a little bit more.Don't know why games just go full retard and simply scale everything with you forever or until a certain static point and falls behind forever.Even a DM in a TTRPG can adjust the campaign a little without fucking his players in the ass just because.
>>737890397i'd probably be fine with something like that, yeah
>>737855554if you didn't understand junction let alone materia you are actually retarded.
>>737855554j/k, it's virtually infinite free money once you get it, but almost everyone got filtered by it
>>737888996There’s a few that’s harder than pokemon than SMTOff the top of my head dept. heaven, saga, resonance of fate
>>737879805>>737888183Late reply here, but LMAO. Granted I didn’t explore the lore too deeply, but I can’t imagine why the developers would do this besides imposing a difficulty spike.
>>737879805>>737888183>>737888270Also, I played with as little outside references as possible: I only looked up the Sephiroth multi-party battle and Enemy Skill materia. I also had the battle speed maxed out - very fun.Should I play FFX or FFVI next? I’m not sure if order matters, since the games are self-contained - I’m going off of community recommendations.
>>737857165Tech vs Strike is basically a skill tree system. Characters will learn tech style or strike style artes based on what EX Skills they have equipped.
Luck doesn't do fucking anything in 90% of JRPGs
>>737878263I think the problem is THAC0 is its just unfamiliar to anyone under the age of 40 and it represents a different evolutionary path that was rejected by gaming at large. Everyone is just familiar with Accuracy vs Evasion and Attack vs Defense, if Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and World of Warcraft used THAC0 people wouldn't find it confusing.
>>737889420The sweetspot is using 3-4 leveled pokemon with varied attack types
>>737892297>no actually good gambling games>no poker or texas holdem>just blackjack or this trash>always 1v1, no full table involvedAmazing how you could get a better gambling experience out of an ubisoft game.
>>737867235I do find it annoying.
>>737893846ThAC0 as digital games did is a little bit counterintuitive, but that's that. Your AC and ThaC0 values would go down but the game mechanics would list as a "positive" change.Also back then the manuals were very thorough and players read it.The change to AC going up and having to hit it was for the better, but ThaC0 itself was only a problem if you had to deal with all the tables and variations in a PnP enviroment.
>>737862602Capacity Core are a pretty terrible system for a blind playthrough. Basically each core gives you stat bonus on level up. But if you level up a stat enough it gives you a new AD Skill. No is no realistic way you could figure out what stats gives what skills when playing blind. If someone was playing blind I would just tell them to play as either Luke or Guy and give the one you play as C Cores that give a big bonus in P ATK and AGI because all the fun combat AD Skills requires levels in those stats.
>>737893846most games use different systems for thing vs thing stat combatyou have no idea how long i've put into researching battle formulas and comparing systems, and figuring out how if even possible to combine systems to compare characters from things that use different power scaling. for reasons. there is no tutorial on youtube, go ahead and look and go crazy when it "did you mean this?" (unrelated video) 100 times in a row like i did. oh and "search for this specifically" and -notthis doesn't work anymore. good luck
>>737883078>Espers have effects like "10% mp increase on level upI hate that your characters can be permanently weaker if you're not using the best espers. I know you don't need it, but it still pisses me off.
>>737888270As long as you have some healing materia and max health materia as well as whatever else you have left over it should be fine.
>>737861453I didnt get it until I watched some tv show about a math genius solving crimes with his cop brother and they said in that show that it each number told you how many mines were next to it.Id played it for years and no one ever told me that.
>>737855989I had originally thought it was based on limit break usages, since the characters I had used the most (Cloud, Tifa, and Red) got all of theirs easily, while everyone else had both of their level 1s and maybe their first level 2. Then I got confused during another playthrough when I learned a level 2 limit break without using one and thought it was solely tied to kills.It wasn't until later on that I figured out that both were true. Using the first limit for a level X amount of times is what gives you the second, while getting X amount of kills is how you learn the first one for the next level. Now I get everyone's limits in that forested area by Fort Condor since you can get Yuffie there and you can encounter decent sized groups of enemies.
>>737856058don't bother anon, Mahjong has to be the worst board game I've ever even tried learning to play. I'd rather play Catan in person than touch that shit again.
>>737855554I always hated equipping magic materia because they would reduce the strength stat.I want cool spells, but I also want to smack things hard.
>>737895371last time i played unmodded og 7 i got climhazzard in the train graveyard, like before even meeting tifa. midgar becomes a joke with any pre-grind.
I still don't understand how Vagrant Story works
>>737896017FF games around 7 had your overall damage scale based on your character level in the formula much more than actual stats so there you go.You can hit stuff with 9999 damage and cast spells for 9999 damage. The worst tradeoff would be how some advanced magic and summon materia gimp your HP but HP Plus more than makes up for that, too.
