My account got banned a few years ago for spamming. I was past lvl100 and just haven't felt like playing again.

Well at least there's more to Borderlands than just finding the vault.

Oh I believe you. I mean logically looking at my location now, the affinity I've built up with NPCs being a little over halfway full, and other cues, yeah. Quite a ways to go.

I prefer the Japanese dub at all times. I think it's cause browsing reviews of the game I heard the English voice acting was the weakest part of the game so I was curious how bad it was. Since North America didn't get it till way later I was able to know voice acting was bad which made me want to listen to it. New Game + where I just enjoy the story will be Japanese voice acting.

But the English voice acting, with the exception of one bad guy's voice being just absolutely horrid, is still fun to listen to. I mean if you ever grew up with PS1 games when developers were all "OMG CD format, let's record voices now" and that led to some cheesy voice acting, then Xenoblade's is easily forgivable. Especially with its classic JRPG feel.

And yeah I noticed that the battle music changed. It's like when all the music changes when you get to the pivotal part in FFVI. This was certainly one of the most important story parts I'm at now.






Yes this song rules. It's not as good as Guilty Gear's metal songs, but Xenoblade does do a good attempt at metal sounding boss fight music.

And yeah it's a shame games like this are taking a back seat to Call of Duty. The MW3 Demo was out on the PSN so I tried it. It's just pretty graphics is all. Besides that a snoozefest.

I'm hoping the Wii U is a more mature console and backwards compatible just so more people can play some of the Wii's good RPGs like Monster Hunter and Xenoblade.

Just started Xenoblade myself. I'm only at the very beginning, but I got turned off very quickly by the character chatter in battle. Good gods, I've had enough of that for a lifetime with Dragon's Dogma, and at least in that game their chatter wasn't completely cheesy and the voice acting was decent. This is absolutely unbearable and you can't even turn it off. Stupid Japanese, what are they thinking? No one can possibly like this, can they?

I didn't want to switch to Japanese for ALL of the voices, but I have no choice, it's the only way to make it bearable. At least when they yell battle silliness in Japanese and I can't understand it doesn't sound as bad.

Also, I see the million fetch quest thing is common in this game too. Why do games have those, exactly? I know they are optional, but I really wish games would have more interesting optional quests in general...

How dare they cater to my need for immersion by having my party members talk to each other?

HOW DARE THEY?!

I'll never understand such a silly complaint myself (seen it elsewhere lately). It's always amused me back to SNES games that had some voice recordings like Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, etc.

The side quests thing is pretty easy to ignore after awhile honestly, it didn't bother me.

Oh man MW3 doesn't even "look" good. That damn engine has been in use probably as long as Bethesda's Gamebryo shit was used.

Terrible, incessant voice acting is a silly complaint? Since when?

I prefer Engrish to be honest.

I'm specifically talking about in game battle banter.

No shit bad voice acting all around is dumb. But I think battle banter is usually just kind of silly and even more often completely unnoticeable to me, so it's just kind of funny to me when people complain about it in some games.

I haven't played the game so I can't really speak to how annoying it is in that specific context, but yeah, it's a totally valid complaint. I've played other games where it got kind of annoying, but I usually just tuned it out.

Yeah battle chatter is one thing, but there are different levels. Take Final Fantasy X for example: Sometimes the characters will make a smartass remark to one another or make a crack about the enemy they're fighting. They'll yell and grunt and say corny things before casting spells but it happens occasionally. Now let's look at Legend of Dragoon or Tales of Vesperia, where characters announce their attacks every time they make them or make the exact same noises/say the same things in the same order in each applicable sequence. In the former case, yes it can add immersion and make the characters and fights seem more real, in the latter case it's damn annoying.

I like some corny vocals in a game at times. "Electric Gutbuster" in Xenoblade Chronicles feels like "Sonic Boom" to me in Street Fighter. "Back slash!", "Light heal", "Hadouken", "Shoryuken", are all like battle cries. It's this fun soundbite that you just get used to and even grow to like at times. Even some short phrases like Dudley's "Let's fight like gentleman" in Street Fighter and "Roly Poly Keep on Rolling!" in Xenoblade is fun to listen to.

But some of the shouting that generates the same repetitive responses from another player is a bit immersion breaking. Cause it's a game trying to be more realistic but it's blatantly a game. Soundbites are just reminding you you're playing a fun game.

As for Xenoblade's subquests, since most of them auto-reward you as soon as you complete it, it's ideal to talk to everyone in a village or city area, then exploring automatically rewards you either when you fight enemies or pick up those shiny blue orb collectibles. I find exploring in this game more fun than Skyrim cause if you wanna see Skyrim type scenery you can easily see it at a National Park. But there's nothing on earth that looks like some of the scenery in Xenoblade. It's pure fantasy. Even though exploring is fun on its own, it's nice to pick up little rewards on the way.

Xenoblade is like coffee or beer. The first taste might be bitter and you wonder why anyone would like it. But it grew on me and I can't imagine a life without it. Like coffee or beer.

If you dont feel like doing all the sidequests in Xenoblade, i'd recommend to playthrough just the basic storyline, because quests and town affinities will reset in NG+ anyway. Story is enjoyable enough in my opinion to keep you going.

I've never had any problems with bad voice acting in any game at all. It could be because english is not my native language so it doesnt "feel too bad" for me. I dont understand japanese but usually those voice actors are just better and give much more emotion in dialogue lines.

In some games voice actings are just so fucking malicious (Star Ocean 2) that you ignore it quickly. I remember playing SO2 and laughed during every single battle for few hours, then i ignored voices until new party member arrives. Because of that, it was really fun game to play.

Finally beat Dark Souls today. Good for me. Even though I feel like I've experienced roughly 75% of the content, I'm moving on with my life, and am glad in doing so.

I got to Gaur Plains in Xenoblade and got bored and stopped playing. That was almost a year ago (I had imported from the UK). I've listened to that soundtrack ad nauseum though... Amazing OST. I'll play it again at some point for sure, but I'll probably start over, because I think I'm still pretty close to the start of the game, all things considered. I also killed some elite monster right at the start, and then later got the quest to kill him, and he wouldn't respawn. My inner-completionist was really not cool with that, so in a way, restarting will allow me to do that right.

As for The Last Story soundtrack, my understanding is that Uematsu composed it, but that some guy named Yoshitaka Suzuki arranged it. Might explain why there's less soul there. But yeah, it's hard to argue that the compositions themselves are not exactly memorable.

Uh what? This isn't immersive at all, on the contrary, it completely breaks the immersion. First of all, this isn't mild, occasional "banter". This is incessant, loud yelling -- and literally at that, it never stops, every attack is preceded by (and often followed by as well) some loud yelling. This happens in every single battle at every single command that you do. And not only that, but the voices are obnoxious as hell. It's like Kahalachan described as being similar to fighting games, but even in fighting games it's actually toned down in comparison. "Sonic boom! Sonic boom! Hadoken!" is short and quick, and of course a fighting game is a very different context than a jRPG.

It's repetitive, it's totally immersion-breaking, and the voices are garbage. In Dragon's Dogma, it wasn't usually a "hadoken!" type of yelling, and at least the voices were much easier to tune out, but it was still annoying and useless. "A goblin, master!" "TIS WEAK TO FIRE!" "Wolves hunt in pack!" "I grant you Holy Light!", blah blah blah, after running into the 143925465th wolf pack or goblin horde this gets irritating, and again immersion-breaking because no one would talk repetitively like that and say the SAME thing every time over and over. Same thing with the non-battle chatter. "Ah, Gran Soren, the heart of all Gransys!" -- why do you say that EVERY time we approach the city, I know what the damn city is -- "I recall a place we can rest not far from here" -- yeah no shit stupid pawn, we've just been there -- "There might be aught to harvest here" everytime you walk by the same beach, ugh. It was so bad that any actual useful advice they might say at some point was completely lost in all the noise. But, again, at least the voice acting wasn't loud and irritating so it was easier to ignore. Still, it's unfathomable that there would be no option to turn it off.

Xenoblade is a lot worse because not only is the chatter/yelling also non-stop, it's cheesy as hell and the voices are loud and distracting. I preferred to have the story cut scenes in English (even if the voice acting was mediocre), but I've set the the voices in Japanese only because it doesn't sound quite as annoying and corny in battle, at least to a non-Japanese speaker. Silly complaint? Yeah, whatever, complaining about something obnoxious that happens during every single command of every single battle is apparently "silly". "Fun to listen to", WTF.... I guess people actually... like hearing that shit.

And that's far from the only flaw in the game I noticed so far. For one thing, not having a "equip now" option in the shop is sooo 1991. Seriously guys, a game made in 2010 and you can't even get the RPG menu basics right? Not to mention slow loading times on many of the menus (including the shop) and they are generally kind of awkward (for instance, the quest log shouldn't show the completed quests by default, that's idiotic). When 20 years old jRPGs streamlined their menus better than you, you know you fail at game design.
The battle system is also underwhelming so far. It reminds me too much of those shitty Tales games with the faux-action that gets too chaotic to have much tactical merit, and of course the dumb AI. At some point I targetted a monster, then my AI character just ran off in the distance to target another monster. She did that twice, too.
And of course the ludicrous spam of insipid quests. I'm not just talking about "kill X monster" or "collect X items" that auto-complete without needing to turn it in, either. Those are not so bad because you just accept 'em all and then it serves as bonus XP/cash when you just progress normally. Fine. No, I'm talking about those where you DO need to turn over some quest item or some such, and now you have to guess the NPC's schedule to make sure s/he spawns at their usual area (at least they put the time travel and teleport thing, but still) to complete the quest. And these "quests" are beyond insignificant and silly. I don't think I will do many of them anymore, even if they give some really good item as reward, because they are just so trite. Give grandma's cookies to the boy. Deliver a love letter to some idiot. Stop a loanshark from bullying some random citizen. Zzzz. I don't care if they're optional, because they are still lame quests, and if the game cannot come up with more interesting side-quests than that, then the game is at fault. To be fair, Xenoblade is far from the only game with this flaw, but I feel the filler is particularly thick in this one. And I've played and beaten Dragon's Dogma, so that's saying quite a lot. Those side-quests make the Borderlands one seem fun and interesting in comparison...

I really want to like the game, it's getting nearly unanimous rave reviews, but so far it's so underwhelming that I wonder how much fanboyism is going on here. Okay, it has good music. But that can't be all it has going for it. I'd say that even the story isn't that compelling*, though of course I'm probably too early to really say. And it's certainly not the Dreamcast-quality graphics. So yeah, I don't get what's so OMG AWESOME BEST JRPG OF THE GENERATION about it.

*

Ah, guess that explains it. Either way, kind of tired of Uematsu at this point.

Yeah, you got like 2% into Xenoblade. That's practically the first main map.

Rare monsters do respawn, though it takes a while so my advice is to complete quest sometime later. Its pretty annoying, if you happen to kill one of those by accident before the actual quest. At first i stopped playing in Gaur Plains too, then i took a few months brake unintentionally and afterwards got hooked into Xenoblade. Hundred gaming hours went really quick.



You can give simple orders to party members by pressing Z down and orders appear right side of the screen (Z+A for targeting same monster, if i remember right). Took me a while to figure out too. Also, battle gets much more tactical later on. Though i agree that AI could be better, there are some characters which are best to use by yourself.

In my opinion the whole game gets much better after halfway point. No more battle tutorials, all characters for different party combinations and story gets more interesting. I think others who completed Xenoblade can agree with me here.

If the game requires a full half of it before getting "better", then there's a serious design/balance flaw in there... I understand some games have a slow start, but there are fucking limits.

Also, I know about the orders now, but at that time I didn't and it's still no explanation for why the dumb girl ran off to the other end of the map to attack a monster when I was targetting the one right in front of me.

It does, but I'd say this is a bit of an exaggeration on a gameplay stance. I loved it from the get go, sure I had to take a few breaks since the length is insane, but I wouldn't say this is a FFXIII case where 70% of the game is an uncustomizable game-locked tutorial. The tutorials don't last long at all and you can do a lot from the get go. Story wise, it certainly gets grander and grander as things go though and so yeah, loved the second half. Melia was one of my favorite characters.

Arguing with Morrigan is like arguing against a wall though. If you aren't feeling it now, I can't see you warming up to the game. I personally loved it, but the gameplay is its weakness. I wish it had a Gambit system or something comparable to control the AI better, or if you could change party members on the fly in combat. Eventually you hit a wall too later in the game where you stop learning new techs/skills and whatnot, so I kept it interesting by just changing up who I played as and messing around with party combinations. I took breaks and would get hooked off and on again.

The story is cliche' and even the creator says so, but the execution was good to me, and it gets typical Xeno-crazy in the later run. What else is it up against JRPG wise nowadays though? Pompous bullshit Final Fantasy, I never hear anyone say anything about the stories in Tales games, and yeah. The competition seems hilariously generic.

AI isn't amazing, but The Lost Story's AI seems about 10x worse... it it gruesome. lol


Just don't go in with that mindset for anything ever, you're bound to be underwhelmed. I approached the game on my own since I like the other Xeno's and ended up liking it, I could completely careless what the world thinks about it, I enjoyed it and that's that. If you don't, that's that too. Not to contradict my point above about what this game is up against though... but yeah, if you know of any seriously good JRPG's this gen, let me know. I'm going back to the PS2 for them, probably gonna hit up Shadow Hearts soon... they look amazing.

I can't think of any that do this off the top of my head.

Holy shit, that IS a big ass game.

If the strongest point of Xenoblade is that every other jRPG this generation sucks so bad in comparison, then it just means that the other games are bad, not that Xenoblade is good. In fact, if this is the best this generation has to offer, it's kinda scary.

I bought the game because it had overwhelming positive reviews literally everywhere, and trustworthy (or so I thought... ) sources told me it was so great. I'll give it a chance, since I paid the full price for it so I might as well, but so far this is fairly disappointing.

To be honest though, I think jRPGs have sucked for ages now. The PS2 generation was garbage, I can only think of Skies of Arcadia and Suikoden 3 and 5 that are truly good and even those I don't really feel like replaying any time soon. My favourite ones are from the 16- and 32-bit eras by far. For a while I thought maybe it was just that I had outgrown them, but I doubt it, because I still enjoy the classics (and no, it's not nostalgia alone). Hell I could replay Shining Force 2 again today and not be bored at all.

(Oh, by the way, Xeogred, I find it amusing how you always make things personal whenever I disagree with you.)


CRPGs probably don't work the same way, I dunno, but in party-based jRPGs this is pretty much required to avoid tediousness, I just can't fathom why it's not in Xenoblade. Very stupid.


Haha.

Looks like Obsidian's kickstarter is up now. Only a few hours in and 400/1100k reached, not bad. With this, I'm more excited about Tim Cain's involvement than anything.

Hey Shutdown, are you following that game Chaos Chronicles? It looks rather promising, IMO.

I'm not excited by this at all. I thought they were going to come up with a turn-based game with full party creation to hit back at publishers, but they seem to be going with real-time (with pause) combat and companion recruitment. I mean, I like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment, but those games helped shape this "protagonist centric" status quo as seen in modern BioWare games. I wanted a return to the roots of the genre in the truest sense.


Oh yes, definitely. This game has the potential to have the best combat in any RPG ever. It's using the OGL as far as I know, so it's up against Knights of the Chalice and Temple of Elemental Evil. As long as they don't mess this up by including crappy encounters and mind-numbing quests (like Temple of Elemental Evil) it stands a good chance. I'm really looking forward to it, because proper turn-based tactical RPGs are such a rarity, especially since the mid-90s.

First off, hell yeah for Black Mesa. Second off, I was going to save money but Steam is selling all of the Deus Ex games for 75% off. I've never played any of them and just said fuck it and bought the whole set.

Take my money Valve.

I trust your judgement: should I play Demon's Souls before Dark Souls, or is jumping right into Dark Souls okay to do as far as story and gameplay is concerned?

You should play both as they are both awesome. But playing Demon's is not a prerequisite for playing Dark, as the story is unrelated.

Awesome! I'll probably go pick up Demon's Souls tomorrow then.

Radiant Historia, if you have a DS. I'd say it's probably the best JRPG I've played since the 32-bit era, though considering the sad state of the genre since then, I suppose it's not that high a praise.

Yeah if you have access to a PS3, it should be essential to go with Demon's first. Overall I'd say I probably like it more, even though there's aspects of Dark I like more than Demon's... they both have their own strengths.


I've always got the vibe you do the same to me, lol.

Skies of Arcadia I've never gotten too, need to play it someday. And yeah HB Radiant Historia looks awesome from everything I've seen, but I've got neck issues that kind of prevent me from really enjoying handhelds... and DS emulation still seems like its a bitch. Bah.


Combat would've been the better word there (don't know if that changes anything). The same thing I'd say about the first two Fallout's. Loved them, but the battle mechanics sucked.

I think if Xenoblade's battle system were more real time, like a new age Secret of Mana... would've been off the hook.

Black Mesa is pretty epic so far. I like how they've actually changed up the maps just a tad here and there, makes it a little fresh. And the new details are just insane. I'm hearing the HCEU military are even tougher somehow, haha can't wait, think I'm almost to them again. If it's really Xen/Zen or whatever that's all they have left to finish, I could really careless... those parts of the original were pretty awful if you ask me. I seriously think in the 20 times I've replayed HL1 I've probably only ran through that stuff once or twice.

That doesn't necessarily the game play is bad.

You'll notice I've been arguing about the game, whereas you casually snipe in something about my alleged personality. Just saying.


Gah, no. Either make it 100% real-time action (à la Zelda, Dark Souls, etc.), or make it completely turn-based. So sick of these awkward hybrids that have the worst of both worlds. At least Xenoblade doesn't have that awful "real time pause" system so ubiquitous these days, but to be honest it's not much better. I mean you only control the special attacks, not even the normal attacks, which are all automatic. When I told HB that my normal attacks were not pressed by a button but were done automatically, he was incredulous. It's really amazing that for some weaker monsters, you could literally just deposit the controller and wait and the battle would be won. Most jRPGs have some sort of auto-battle mechanism for that sort of situation, true, but that's taking things a bit far now...

I got to that Gaur Plain yesterday and the obligatory scantily clad fanservice chick joined my party. It's really hilarious how no matter what armor I equip on her, her boobs are always showing. Anyway, the place is huge, and I hope there is fun stuff to do all around it.

This is definitely the RPG I'm looking forward to the most (trumping even Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin). On their blog, they sure cite enough good influences. I wonder if there's going to be food/water (would be cool if there was, plus a bunch of ranger/hunting skills to go along with it). Nicest surprise is the hex-grid combat, plus character facing. I hope there's a lot of different types of attacks and combat options, plus called shots. It sounds like if someone doesn't know what they're doing, they won't make it past the first encounter.

I think I'm going to set up WinUAE sometime this weekend and give "Fate: Gates of Dawn" a go. Apparently, its an obscure Wizardry/Bard's Tale type game on the Amiga, except way bigger in size. "Perihelion: The Prophecy" looks fairly promising too.

You used to find hunting skills in some of the old RPGs. I always liked the idea of having a hunting specialist (usually the ranger) obtaining food for the party to eat. I remember Eternal Dagger (an old pre-Gold Box SSI game) had a hunting skill that your ranger could practice, and Realms of Arkania had some skills (such as animal lore I believe) that affected your ability to hunt. I really like the idea of having secondary/utility skills that can be of huge importance to the way you play without being confined to dialogue branches. Survival skills, social skills, navigation skills, crafting skills etc. Some games even attempted language skills, such as Legend of Faerghail (the one before Fate: Gates of Dawn), with its common, animal, orc, lizard, dwarven, elven, dark and magic languages. I'd love to see more of this stuff in modern RPGs.


Do you read the RPGCodex or RPGWatch? Because I read about it having a hex-grid on one of those two sites. I think it'll fit well with the close quarter fighting as you can have up to six enemies surrounding a single character. With a square grid you get eight, but divided up into two distances (corners are more accurately treated as being further away than sides). I'm more worried about how good the encounter design will be. That tends to be the biggest problem with tactical RPGs. You can have the best combat system ever with tons of combat options and spells, but if the battles are boring then it makes it all irrelevant.

Regarding character facing, I've always felt that this was something that had been neglected in the genre. You see it a lot in proper turn-based tactics games, but it's extremely rare in tactical RPGs. I suppose it does make combat somewhat slower when you need to adjust the direction each character is facing after movement, but it does open up a whole new set of possibilities for combat mechanics. I remember Wizard's Crown featured character facing and it used it really well for the time (we're talking 1985 here). Your shield only protects you from the front and from the side of your shield arm, for example, and you can only attack in a forward direction. But to make things more complicated, the more you move in a turn the less directional changes you can make afterwards. So if you run a certain number of squares you can't turn at the end of it, while if you only move a single square you can turn the full 180 degrees.


Perihelion is a let down. It was basically an attempt to create an Amiga exclusive Gold Box game, but you'll find it incomplete and largely empty. The graphics and art style are great though. Fate: Gates of Dawn is better, but it's absolutely massive. You won't be completing that in a hurry. Lots of characters, spells and equipment, with lots of big puzzles to solve. I can't think of many other Amiga RPGs though. I guess you could give Ambersun and Ambermoon a go if you haven't played them already. They are both way better than Albion, so don't let that game put you off (if you didn't enjoy it).

FFT has character facing!

I'm really getting into Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It's no 1.6, but I like it better than Source, and it seems that my skills have transferred over from 1.6 fairly well.

Deus Ex Human Revolution.

So far the worst flaw is that humans look very unrealistic. They look like some clumsy marionettes cause of how they animate and how unrealistically human they appear. But man the rest of the graphics and art design are superb. I feel like I'm in some kind of cyberpunk future world.

When my biggest complaint about a game based on first impressions is about graphics, that's a good thing. It means what's important is good still.

Music is very fitting. It's like Mass Effect. Good sci-fi tracks.

The gameplay is very interesting. As far as stealth I prefer Batman or Metal Gear Solid games cause I like 3rd person stealth. I can see myself and get a good idea if people can see me. In first person view I mess that up sometimes. Combat is hard. I mean this isn't something you can just stand up and shoot and be fine. You'll die from very few bullets. I like this. I like dialog choices. In fact, Bioware should take notes. You can see the gist of what he's going to say "Empathize" or "Plea" or something. And this is where Bioware just says "OK good enough" But it also shows part of the sentence you're going to say. So it lets you make good decisions on what dialog you want to choose.

The story is probably the best. All I did was the first mission. But I care. I care about the main character. Other characters he's close to. I hate his co-workers. I certainly hope this is intentional in their character development. I care about the world I'm in. It seems to be on the verge of some very important moral and technological decisions. I want to know what happens next. I have no idea what role I'm about to play but I want to know. I want to hear people chattering around me cause they say interesting things. I like reading the newspaper articles.


As far as being fun to play it falls just short of Batman or Metal Gear Solid. So how good it is overall is going to hinge on the story. If it's well written and I just love it to death, then this would be a great game for me. This has to be a deep sci-fi story for me to just adore this game. Games have some bad writing so often and this seems like it could be a well written game.

I don't see this being up there with both D. Souls or the Fallouts, but this game has the potential of being just shy of perfection.

It is probably one of my favorites this gen. I easily prefer it to Skyrim, both came out last year I think. It was pretty lengthy too.

I tried playing it but I think I installed it wrong... All the video cutscenes and tutorials were super choppy and I couldn't make it through the first part of the game because of that. Oh well, I've heard good things about it and hardly any complaints so once I start getting a steady paycheck I'll actually purchase the game(and a new video card just in case).

Yeah, CS:GO kinda feels "right". The recoil of the guns feels tight and the hitboxes aren't monstrously huge. I like that they retuned the spray patterns for the lesser used guns to make them more viable. My favorite so far is the SG 553, which draws a "7" with a bias towards the tip of the shape for the last 15 rounds. Easy gun to use but a tad expensive.