Starward Rogue Update 1.013: New Rooms, New Enemies, and Balance Work

[Captain Jack]

Academagia's problem was no curation of its own modding scene. Anytime someone came up with an event it was thrown into the next release version with the barest of scrutiny. And since the game has a strict deadline too many of those locks you out of things you need.

Get a 2DS. Not even joking, my 3DS is my favorite console for the last two gens. Of course I am a RPG nut and the best Wizardry clone ever is the Etrian Odyssey series, but there's also RF and you'd probably also like Fire Emblem.

You want something heavier on game with crunchy stats, right?

[ptarth]

Academagia's problem was no curation of its own modding scene. Anytime someone came up with an event it was thrown into the next release version with the barest of scrutiny. And since the game has a strict deadline too many of those locks you out of things you need.

Get a 2DS. Not even joking, my 3DS is my favorite console for the last two gens. Of course I am a RPG nut and the best Wizardry clone ever is the Etrian Odyssey series, but there's also RF and you'd probably also like Fire Emblem.

You want something heavier on game with crunchy stats, right?

The event binges were annoying, but acceptable to me. My major frustration was that to have useful spell effects I have to do crazy chain casting, counting of phemes, a lot of algebra, and then repeat it every X days. The crafting system was also the same. Too many ideas, not enough tuning!

Fire Emblems on SNES were pretty good. I've found myself recently being conflicted over the grind. When is it grinding as you level up? Is it grinding good? Is grinding evil? Is some grinding just experiencing how your characters react to combat in different ways? Looking at Arc the Lad: Twilight of Spirits you have a game with no grinding, but I found it less satisfying (and forget the nonsense about item pickups only possible during battle).

Yeah. So I want meaty simulation management in there somewhere. So things like Europa Universalis, Dungeon Keeperish, SimX (but not the Sims), ThemePark, Evil Genius, Patrician, Anno, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, XCOM, and Stars!.

[Captain Jack]

Obligatory: Receattear.

The Last Remnant is a secret successor to the Romancing SaGa series (AKA Final Fantasy Adventure). It's also unforgivably obtuse, use a goddamn guide FFS.

For sim games, the X series of space sims? I think the community agrees that you need to mod them to high heaven to make them shine though.

Oh, the city sims. Zeus, Caesar (IV).

And there's always... sigh... the Atelier series on Playstation. The fanbase and developers are both more into moeru bullshit than good game design, but the foundations have been solid for over a decade.

Augh, wish I could find my 3DS game case, I know I have some stuff there you'd like.

[TheVampire100]

I really don't like the Last remnant. everythign in it was so damn confusing and it tried to imitate a strategy game without being one. I tried it at least three times and stopped very soon.

I have Atelier Iris 3 which was evry good but I haven't played anything else from the series. The problem that showed me was, the game is too freaking long. I haven't finished it, I don't even know how close I am to the end. It is fun to play, the crafting system is great, but you get the feeling the game is stretched.

[Captain Jack]

I really don't like the Last remnant. everythign in it was so damn confusing and it tried to imitate a strategy game without being one. I tried it at least three times and stopped very soon.

I have Atelier Iris 3 which was evry good but I haven't played anything else from the series. The problem that showed me was, the game is too freaking long. I haven't finished it, I don't even know how close I am to the end. It is fun to play, the crafting system is great, but you get the feeling the game is stretched.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the game needs a guide. NEEDS a guide, and even about ten years on we STILL don't know what all the stats do. Plus there's the anti-grinding feature and missable events and items and auuuuuuugh.

[Ayrix]

The Last Remnant is a secret successor to the Romancing SaGa series (AKA Final Fantasy Adventure). It's also unforgivably obtuse, use a goddamn guide FFS.


And there's always... sigh... the Atelier series on Playstation. The fanbase and developers are both more into moeru bullshit than good game design, but the foundations have been solid for over a decade.

We have another SaGa successor  in the form of Legend of Legacy too.

TLR was really, really odd, giant fights with a lot of mechanics based on making your parties (yes plural) flank enemies. Also yeah you need a guide for about 80% of the mechanics, and difficulty scales with level (kinda like AI war) so you get punished healvily for grinding at the wrong times.

Atelier is normally okay, the Arland trilogy did go a little far on the moe (not that being able to fulfil the classic magical princess who lives in a Disney castle power fantasy wasn't fun) though the next set seem to have scaled it back. Gust in general seem to be a bit odd with this, they go for generally well fleshed out female characters with pleanty of agency, and then go for some very, almost Compile Heart level, generic moe visual design and a dashing of overused anime tropes. Pity their most interesting game of the last gen (Ciel nosurge) will never get translated.

[ptarth]

...Receattear...
...The Last Remnant...
...X (space sim series)...
...Zeus/Poseidon/Cleopatra/Pharaoh/Caesar 3...
...Atelier...

• Capitalism Ho!
• I have a copy of SaGa but never got around to it. FFTactics and the other one were okay. Disagea <X> were better for me.
• X I've been needing to get into for the last decade. Star Ruler - meh. Star Ruler, not that one, the other one - Meh, Space Empires <X> a bit much for me actually, Star Control 2- Yeah!
• Zeus/Poseidon/Cleopatra/Pharaoh/Caesar 3- I got into them late, but I hate the walker mechanic. Hate. Hate. HATE!
• Atelier - Played Atelier Iris 1 & 2. The crafting system was just tacked on to a mediocre slow plot. It poisoned me against the series. There are also too many different versions of the same game!

That also reminds me of Ogre Battle and Soul Nomad (Let's bust some heads like in the old days!)! Searching also reveals La Pucelle: Tactics (never got to play it).

[Captain Jack]

La Pucelle is shite. Actually I think that about most N1 games that aren't Disgaea 1 so I'm probably biased. Soul Nomad is the exception but even that's mostly me reacting to how over the top, hilariously evil the True Demon path is in that game.

Nice Ogre Battle mention, underappreciated Queen song and a criminally underutilized series. Still love the Overture.

Oh, uhhhh.... how about full RPGs? Xenoblade Chronicles is a spiritual successor to -Saga and -Gears, but is better than both by virtue of actually being complete [/rimshot]. It's also a Wii game, a modern toaster can run the emulator.

I would recommend Persona but the first one is clunky (still my favorite), the second has terrible combat and the best story, the third is the best one all around but lacks a truly definitive version and Persona 4 is "blessed" with a toxic fanbase and over-reliance on Japanese high school tropes.

Instead play Shin Megami Tensei. I recommend Devil Survivor, Strange Journey and Nocturne in that order.

[crazyroosterman]

hey so while most of this rpg talk is gibberish to me(I really haven't heard of 90 percent of the games you fellas are talking about) one I happen know of through spy's greatest hits Is a game called digital devil saga is it actually worth playing? if so ill be sure to do so if I'm ever in the position to do so.

[Captain Jack]

hey so while most of this rpg talk is gibberish to me(I really haven't heard of 90 percent of the games you fellas are talking about) one I happen know of through spy's greatest hits Is a game called digital devil saga is it actually worth playing? if so ill be sure to do so if I'm ever in the position to do so.

It's my personal favorite in the series. Best music, good story, my favorite original art in the franchise, and lots of crunchy character building.

EDIT: Ah, one thing is that DDS is split into two games. The second literally picks up an hour after the first so it does make sense to play them back to back.

[Rythe]

Yeah. So I want meaty simulation management in there somewhere. So things like Europa Universalis, Dungeon Keeperish, SimX (but not the Sims), ThemePark, Evil Genius, Patrician, Anno, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, XCOM, and Stars!.

Factorio? Although the trailers for it are ancient.

[Strix]

Instead play Shin Megami Tensei. I recommend Devil Survivor, Strange Journey and Nocturne in that order.

Given the unforgivably frustrating dungeon design in Strange Journey, that's a really, really cruel recommendation to drop on someone, especially when you're ranking it over Nocturne. I mean, the dungeons in SJ are on par with SMT I/II which is to say they're super tedious mazes. Amazing games, all of them, but you have to be patient and work at them.

As for Devil Survivor, it's so vastly different from the main games in the franchise that you should mention it's a SRPG first and foremost, not a dungeoncrawler.

(Ahem, I've been into Megaten for a long, long time. I personally rec Nocturne > Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner > anything else in the franchise in terms of being playable/relatively easily accessible, but my personal favorites in the franchise are SMT II and the Raidou spin-offs.)

[ptarth]

I played Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 back on the PS2. It was okay. I haven't tried the news ones yet.
I have Factorio. It's pretty cool. It is almost Transport Tycoon for the independent alien world invading capitalist. If there was agriculture involved, less aliens, and a town/social component it would be awesome.

[Cinth]

Ya know, this brings up an interesting point... we have a highly moddable game but NO ACTUAL MODS.  Instead we've had submissions and things that just get entered into the game (since so far, there hasnt been anything that "doesnt fit" or something).

It would indeed be nice if we could get some actual mods going and available.   A mod that alters the available mechs might be a fun one.  I'm too lazy to do that myself though.

Someone that isnt me would also need to write up a guide on properly installing mods though.  But yeah, I do think we could use some.

I made a mech that only one really wanted to play with so I pulled it.  So there was a mod.  I still have it and 2 more Mechs in partial build stages.  I kinda have other stuff to do before I pick those up again though.

[Captain Jack]

Instead play Shin Megami Tensei. I recommend Devil Survivor, Strange Journey and Nocturne in that order.

Given the unforgivably frustrating dungeon design in Strange Journey, that's a really, really cruel recommendation to drop on someone, especially when you're ranking it over Nocturne. I mean, the dungeons in SJ are on par with SMT I/II which is to say they're super tedious mazes. Amazing games, all of them, but you have to be patient and work at them.

As for Devil Survivor, it's so vastly different from the main games in the franchise that you should mention it's a SRPG first and foremost, not a dungeoncrawler.

(Ahem, I've been into Megaten for a long, long time. I personally rec Nocturne > Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner > anything else in the franchise in terms of being playable/relatively easily accessible, but my personal favorites in the franchise are SMT II and the Raidou spin-offs.)

Strange Journey's only really frustrating in Eridanus. Before that it's not bad. Plus it's fast to traverse and battles go quick. I recommend it over Nocturne because SJ's difficulty curve is much gentler than "You are now leaving Ginza, meet your first Fiend!", even if it's a harder game. Plus, Nocturne is so much of a deconstruction of the mainline games that it's a much better game if you've played other SMT games before.

Devil Survivor is as close to mainline SMT thematically as you can get without playing mainline, even if it's a different genre. Lighter on the cyberpunk and higher on modern anime tropes, but it keeps the Law vs. Chaos conflict, most of the usual suspects and the Chaos bias.  I would normally recommend SMT IV, but the first three hours of that are super off putting because of how hard they are.

Actually, that's not a bad idea. Go from Digital Devil (1) to SMT 4 and you'll be primed to experience the suffering deaths Shin Megami Tensei series, ptarth.

I have Factorio. It's pretty cool. It is almost Transport Tycoon for the independent alien world invading capitalist. If there was agriculture involved, less aliens, and a town/social component it would be awesome.

....I should have thought of this sooner. Have you played King of Dragon Pass?