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[Llyranor]

I don't think that anything that is simply "different" is something that should be seen as acceptable, good or progressive. Anything which is different from the norm should be different because it either advances a concept, or introduces a new sort of logic which enhances the player experience. Taking control away from the player and introducing illogical targeting schemes is not something which sounds appealing to.... anyone at all. Sure, it could be a "challenge" to approach the game different, but that doesn't mean it would be fun.

I could design an action game where every time you attack, you either damage the enemy or you damage yourself. There could be very concise rules built around it, like if you're facing left and there is a wall on the right, you will damage the enemy, if not you will damage yourself. You could "prepare" for this by always making sure you face the left and there is a wall on the right before you attack. That doesn't make the game fun though, it just makes it frustrating because there is no actual rational behind such a play scheme.

Similarly here, there is no logical reason why you cannot target your own party members when using a single target healing spell. It's silly and nonsensical. The player uses control over a core mechanic in a turn based battle system (targeting), and in return gets nothing. It's not more fun, it's not more exciting, it's just more frustrating and illogical. That's just a terrible way to design a game, if what Reno is describing is true.

I'm not defending this game specifically, since if the only reason they've designed it was so that it's be more 'accessible', then yeah that's a pretty stupid reason.

But on the other hand, arbitrary rulesets aren't *necessarily* bad; just depends on their implementation. Why does attack-linking in Yggdra Union require males to form diagonals and females straight crosses? It's completely abstracted and makes no sense at all, but works well enough in the context of the game so as to make you approach the situation differently based on the *gender* (of all things, yeesh) of your units. Heck, Riviera does the exact same thing as this game for healing, doesn't it? (forget if it's total or percentage). There are a good number of games for which some abilities will affect 'target (enemy or ally) with x condition - whether it be hp level, a certain status, or whatever; and the tactical challenge lies in setting up the scenario such that the condition is applied to the target YOU want. It can seem arbitrary, but it just needs to make sense within the ruleset itself. The first example that comes to mind is a bunch of cards from CCG's.

Similarly, some people are very frustrated at Last Remnant for what seems to be random commands showing up. While I do have some sense after finishing the game of what situation may help trigger certain commands, I still can't grasp the ruleset completely. The system isn't BETTER than normal turn-based with full control; it just works extremely well for that specific game.

Again, I'm not defending this game (don't know enough about how it works - and it sounds like it'd be giving this game too much credit). But, I *can* imagine a system where targetting could be completely left up to clear concise rules the player needs to adhere to, rather than complete manual control.

 

[Quixzlizx]

3) Its not like in games where you CAN target characters for healing, you would never heal the wrong guy either. For example, a boss gets to your character before you can heal him/her, and then the spell is wasted because it goes on to heal someone with perfect HP. There's always going to be problems.

Wow, what a weak rationalization... "Sometimes you fail due to human error, so you'd might as well let the AI fuck it up for you instead and save yourself the trouble!"

 

[Josh7289]

Hmm, not sure what to think. I'm not completely against the lack of targetting for healing. It's opposite what we're used to, but as chicken_ramen says, it might just make you approach the battle differently. In the case of the mage33/thief30 example, if you KNOW that the heal will go to the thief, maybe you should opt for a different recourse, having the mage defend, buff, etc? Again, it's not what we're used to, but a different system could challenge us in a different way.

Of course, this only applies if it works :/ That ice on ice thing doesn't sound so swell. Random auto-targetting is BAD. If you remove manual targetting, there need to be clear concise rules as in Riviera, not random crap.

I pretty much agree with this.

I don't think that anything that is simply "different" is something that should be seen as acceptable, good or progressive. Anything which is different from the norm should be different because it either advances a concept, or introduces a new sort of logic which enhances the player experience. Taking control away from the player and introducing illogical targeting schemes is not something which sounds appealing to.... anyone at all. Sure, it could be a "challenge" to approach the game different, but that doesn't mean it would be fun.

I could design an action game where every time you attack, you either damage the enemy or you damage yourself. There could be very concise rules built around it, like if you're facing left and there is a wall on the right, you will damage the enemy, if not you will damage yourself. You could "prepare" for this by always making sure you face the left and there is a wall on the right before you attack. That doesn't make the game fun though, it just makes it frustrating because there is no actual rational behind such a play scheme.

Similarly here, there is no logical reason why you cannot target your own party members when using a single target healing spell. It's silly and nonsensical. The player uses control over a core mechanic in a turn based battle system (targeting), and in return gets nothing. It's not more fun, it's not more exciting, it's just more frustrating and illogical. That's just a terrible way to design a game, if what Reno is describing is true.

Well obviously the rules would have to not be convoluted. The example you gave was really convoluted, and of course a system like that would be bad.

As for 4 Warriors of Light, it may indeed be true that its auto-targeting system is just random, or has dumb rules. If that's the case, I think we can all agree that it's a poor system.

But in general, auto-targeting is not inherently bad. For example, if it's built with rules that make some degree of sense in the context of the game, it can be a good system. You may not personally like it, but then that's just a simple case of a normal difference of opinion/tastes.

 

[Fuu]

An auto-targeting system that works wonders and is actually fun to deal with? Sure, sign me in.

I'm positive no one in this thread is fully against auto-targeting for healing and attacking in a JRPG (after all we did know about it being in this game for a while now and it didn't instantly kill interest), but I think we're all against shitty auto-targeting which unfortunately seems to be the case.

 

[duckroll]

I'm not defending this game specifically, since if the only reason they've designed it was so that it's be more 'accessible', then yeah that's a pretty stupid reason.

But on the other hand, arbitrary rulesets aren't *necessarily* bad; just depends on their implementation. Why does attack-linking in Yggdra Union require males to form diagonals and females straight crosses? It's completely abstracted and makes no sense at all, but works well enough in the context of the game so as to make you approach the situation differently based on the *gender* (of all things, yeesh) of your units. Heck, Riviera does the exact same thing as this game for healing, doesn't it? (forget if it's total or percentage). There are a good number of games for which some abilities will affect 'target (enemy or ally) with x condition - whether it be hp level, a certain status, or whatever; and the tactical challenge lies in setting up the scenario such that the condition is applied to the target YOU want. It can seem arbitrary, but it just needs to make sense within the ruleset itself. The first example that comes to mind is a bunch of cards from CCG's.

Similarly, some people are very frustrated at Last Remnant for what seems to be random commands showing up. While I do have some sense after finishing the game of what situation may help trigger certain commands, I still can't grasp the ruleset completely. The system isn't BETTER than normal turn-based with full control; it just works extremely well for that specific game.

Again, I'm not defending this game (don't know enough about how it works - and it sounds like it'd be giving this game too much credit). But, I *can* imagine a system where targetting could be completely left up to clear concise rules the player needs to adhere to, rather than complete manual control.

Right, I totally agree about there being a need for clear concise rules, but my point was that aside from that, it also has to be something fun that engages the player instead of frustrating the player. In the games mentioned, the random elements and the "unique" rules are actually based on a foundation of gameplay mechanics which are communicated to the player in some detail, and offers itself up as a specific set of rules within the game world. They also happen to be fun to play, so much like how it might not make "sense" how you can draw a Chance card in Monopoly that sends you "straight to jail", it doesn't matter as much because everyone is aware of the risk of that, and it is fun within the context of the game.

So far, based on Reno's impressions, the context of the auto targeting system simply doesn't sound fun. I would love to clarify that he indeed sucks at JRPGs, and that everyone has been misled by his lack of skill or whatever. I'm sure he would sorta like that to happen as well, because if there IS a context behind the system, it would make the game more enjoyable for him too. Unfortunately, because of free shipping from Play-Asia, and because chicken_ramen isn't posting enough impressions, we'll just have to react based on Reno's more detailed impressions at the moment. Lol.

Well obviously the rules would have to not be convoluted. The example you gave was really convoluted, and of course a system like that would be bad.

As for 4 Warriors of Light, it may indeed be true that its auto-targeting system is just random, or has dumb rules. If that's the case, I think we can all agree that it's a poor system.

But in general, auto-targeting is not inherently bad. For example, if it's built with rules that make some degree of sense in the context of the game, it can be a good system. You may not personally like it, but then that's just a simple case of a normal difference of opinion/tastes.

I never said that auto-targeting is inherently bad. I said that systems which offer something new and different should never forget what makes games FUN to begin with. What I'm saying is that just because something is different, doesn't give it the benefit of the doubt of being good or even potentially good. It should be seen in the context of the actual execution and if that sounds bad, then it should be met with suspicion because when you try to make an oldschool game, but throw in wacky "new" elements like this and it ends up failing, it's very unfortunate. There's always that saying "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" and that might apply here.

 

[Oichi]

So far, based on Reno's impressions, the context of the auto targeting system simply doesn't sound fun. I would love to clarify that he indeed sucks at JRPGs, and that everyone has been misled by his lack of skill or whatever. I'm sure he would sorta like that to happen as well, because if there IS a context behind the system, it would make the game more enjoyable for him too. Unfortunately, because of free shipping from Play-Asia, and because chicken_ramen isn't posting enough impressions, we'll just have to react based on Reno's more detailed impressions at the moment. Lol.

:lol :lol :lol

I actually DO think I suck at JRPGs, that's why I almost never post about them! :lol

 

[Llyranor]

Oh yeah, I totally agree that 'innovation' in and of itself is pretty irrelevant. Just being something is 'unique' doesn't make it good. I should know, I played Too Human ;____;

 

[souvlakispacestation]

I gave this game a chance, I played nearly 10 hours (I guess... can't be exact because the stupid game doesn't have a clock), but in the end, I realized it's just shit and definitely not worth my time. I thus sold it off and I couldn't be happier.

Everything on my list of 'bad' qualities went from bad to terrible pretty quickly. Such a shame they screwed this game up, as the art and atmosphere are really special.

Oh well.

 

[Yaweee]

Thank you all for assassinating my hype. Now I won't feel bad about waiting out the Square-Enix tax.

And, hey, there's always the possibility that SE will add in targeting for the US edition. There was targeting shown in some of the early previews, wasn't there?

 

[Oichi]

Progress so far:

Spoiler

I defeated Roran, who wasn't nearly as hard as the two elemental bosses before him. What made it difficult is that you can change jobs and the equipment of what you're carrying, but because of the story, after you defeat those two elemental bosses you can't go into your treasure chest to deposit unneeded items and get what weapons/armor you would want to fight him with.

I now have full control of all four party members (finally!) and now the game has opened up so I can go about and do whatever I want without being confined to the story. I know what I have to do now but I'll probably spend the next couple of hours flying around and seeing what I can do in order to upgrade my weapons. I took a peek at the next dungeon I assume I have to go into so I'll be better prepared for it.

For the record, I have 50% of the crowns in the game. I'm not sure how many are obtained through sidequests though since I haven't been thrown off the main story aside from the merchant mini-game.

 

[duckroll]

My game arrived.

 

[Hours Left]

Who are these animals? Do each of the four character have their own pet/mascot/familiar/etc?

 

[duckroll]

This is one of the best looking DS RPGs I've played. The art direction is a few gazillion times better than DQIX, and the world actually looks awesome and appealing to explore. Yoshida is really fucking talented and he should be put in charge of more games at S-E.

 

[Pureauthor]

This is one of the best looking DS RPGs I've played. The art direction is a few gazillion times better than DQIX, and the world actually looks awesome and appealing to explore. Yoshida is really fucking talented and he should be put in charge of more games at S-E.

After the artwork (and the trailers, can't forget those) was there ever any doubt?

 

[chicken_ramen]

Who are these animals? Do each of the four character have their own pet/mascot/familiar/etc?

Do you really want to know? It's a spoiler.

Spoiler

They're the animal forms of the main characters. After a certain point early in the game you can switch between forms at will, which allows you to talk to animals and get to certain harder to reach places. As far as I can tell there are no effects on your abilities in battle, those are based on whatever items and crown you have equipped, regardless of what form you're in.

This game is really growing on me, and the targetting thing is something that hasn't caused me any dramas. I haven't posted any impressions because I don't have much to add outside of that point. It's cute, charming and fun, and I'm enjoying the story, and it's been a while since I have in a JRPG. It's just barebones enough that the silly charm of it isn't drowning in text.

Abilities will target different enemies, often they're arranged in a front and back row, magic and ranged weapons will always attack the back row first, and swords and so on will always attack the front. This is written on each ability and it's easy to get a handle on. The curing situation is strange, but hasn't caused me any problems. I am getting greater disparities in my HP totals though so as time goes on as the situation becomes more exacerbated the failings may show up more readily. I have to say the autopilot white mage/tank situation did almost arise again, but enemies have been using sleep and paralyze which kept me more on my toes and bosses haven't allowed me to autopilot through them outside that one time I mentioned.

Right now I can't think of much more to say. This isn't a complex game. It mixes some old school design choices with some very modern ones in a way that I find disarmingly charismatic. It's in the story, the battles and the little touches, like (after world tree spoilers)

Spoiler

Brand's weird love for the dog form everyone comments on, or that turning the rod on Jusqua turns him into a chicken.

I think details like this are funny and cute and are a part of the real love that has been poured into this game.

edit: Actually, I enjoyed Devil Survivor's story, for incredibly different reasons, so it's only been about 10-11 months.

 

[Ledsen]

This is one of the best looking DS RPGs I've played. The art direction is a few gazillion times better than DQIX, and the world actually looks awesome and appealing to explore. Yoshida is really fucking talented and he should be put in charge of more games at S-E.

I've been saying this since Vagrant Story! The man is a genius.

 

[duckroll]

edit: Actually, I enjoyed Devil Survivor's story, for incredibly different reasons, so it's only been about 10-11 months.

You don't like SJ's story?

 

[chicken_ramen]

You don't like SJ's story?

It's not an active dislike thing, that doesn't happen very often either. I'm really undecided on the story. It's cool and enigmatic, but peripheral and wordy at the same time. So I'm not sure yet. I like SJ 'cos it's a pretty good game.

Not finished either though so things may change I guess.

 

[duckroll]

Put a few hours into the game so far, finished two story dungeons. The game is pretty fun, and is just so appealing to play. I haven't run into any trouble with the auto-targeting so far, as mentioned before, the battles have rows, and generally your melee attacks always targets an enemy on the front row, while range and magic will always target an enemy in the back row. So far the configurations are such that there're only two enemy types in a battle, so it's not a big deal right now. You basically know what you'll be targeting based on what attacks you use.

There's also a passive tension system, where at the start of a turn, before you input your commands, some of your party members might flash yellow. This indicates that if you use an active command on that turn for those characters, it's more effective. It's an interesting way of managing when to charge AP and when to just attack anyway. If you have two characters in tension mode and both do melee attacks, there's a change they'll do a combination attack instead which does much more damage.

Overall the game itself is very simple, but it's still fun and mostly stress free. I've actually encountered something interesting in the game design as well. For the second dungeon boss, there are different ways of beating it.

Spoiler

The boss is really strong against any attacks, until it gets "broken" by a water attack. You can stock up on expensive water bomb stones to use on the boss, as each break will last 2-3 turns at most.

This is the brute force and more obvious way of beating the boss but it costs money and might require grinding. But there is another way, even though you cannot buy the Water spell book (the town sells the other 3 elements though!).

You can sneak into the castle's basement at night, and go through a short underground cave dungeon to find the Water spell book. This will allow one of your characters to cast the spell on the boss, saving you the 300 gil per stone you would otherwise have to spend.

Now, the game doesn't tell you in an OBVIOUS way that the second method exists, but it does leave a good amount of clues if you talk to all the NPCs, and take note of the subtle changes between day and night. It's an interesting design choice, and I hope there are many more elements like this throughout the game because it rewards players who actually explore around and get pro-active in a role playing game.

 

[Error]

That sounds very old school.

 

[chicken_ramen]

Now, the game doesn't tell you in an OBVIOUS way that the second method exists, but it does leave a good amount of clues if you talk to all the NPCs, and take note of the subtle changes between day and night. It's an interesting design choice, and I hope there are many more elements like this throughout the game because it rewards players who actually explore around and get pro-active in a role playing game.

This is actually one of my favorite things about the game, though I can see it being offputting to some people. Especially as it can be difficult to always know where to go unless you ask around. To me this is old school in a cool way, these days there'd just be a big arrow of some sort in a minimap and you'd never talk to NPCs.

Speaking of maps though, I'm sure that the one in the game would look very nice all blown up at original size, but as a navigational aid it is almost completely useless.

 

[Pureauthor]

Thanks for the detailed impressions, duckroll. It sounds interesting.

 

[duckroll]

Man, I'm really liking the job balance in this game. With MP being removed, and the AP system in place, each job's specialization is really emphasized. Mages become total nuke/healing monsters because you essentially have unlimited use of spells, and with black magic taking up 1 AP less for Black Mages and vice verse for white magic and White Mages, you basically have free use of the spells each turn as if it's a regular move.

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Saw the videos on Game Trailers.

This game has an AMAZING artstyle.

Just looks fucking gorgeous even for DS hardware.

 

[Dragona Akehi]

Man, I'm really liking the job balance in this game. With MP being removed, and the AP system in place, each job's specialization is really emphasized. Mages become total nuke/healing monsters because you essentially have unlimited use of spells, and with black magic taking up 1 AP less for Black Mages and vice verse for white magic and White Mages, you basically have free use of the spells each turn as if it's a regular move.

So your hate was unfounded? HAH.

 

[Hours Left]

Do you really want to know? It's a spoiler.

Thanks.

 

[Oichi]

One of the neat things so far is that once you're at the point where you get all four warriors in your party and

Spoiler

you get control of the dragon

, you pretty much have freedom to do whatever you want, and it seems that you can complete the rest of the game in any order you want, provided you're able to survive. :lol The game doesn't really tell you in what order you need to complete the quests, so it's up to you to figure it out yourself.

I was telling duckroll last night that I thought I was going on a sidequest, but it ended up being part of the main storyline. I checked some online wikis and sure enough, it was a scenario of the main story that I wasn't supposed to finish until I beat two other scenarios.:lol I kinda like that you can do this but I got totally roasted because I made my way through the dungeon with said boss, only to get hit with an all-party attack dealing 300HP to each char... and all of my chars had only 120HP :lol

Some minor things that annoy me...
- When you save at the save guy, the default ALWAYS goes to "No, don't save". Um, why? I'm talking to the dude, of course I want to save!

- When you have a temporary party member in your party, DO NOT give them anything important. I actually purchased a Firaga spellbook, which was about 5000 gold, and I gave it to a temporary party member. When that person left, I also lost the Firaga spellbook. That was actually the only time I had ever given something to a temp member so I didn't realize it until now. :/

- When purchasing armor/weapons they don't give you any real information on how it will affect your characters I find. Like, if I am looking at some armor and it says it raises my character's defense from 8 to 10, it tells me that but it won't tell me if, say, that same armor lowers my character's intelligence from 9 to 7.

 

[chicken_ramen]

Story spoilers:

Spoiler

I'm in Speria(sp) and I have Roran in my party and I'm going to fight the boss in this dungeon, but I'm getting continually pissed off here. Here's the situation... it's a two boss fight, one fire elemental and one ice elemental. Both have physical attacks and one physical elemental attack that hits all parties. Because of the auto-targeting system, all characters target the fire one first... even though he does the LEAST damage out of the two bosses. The ice boss' all party attack hits me for 30+ HP most times, whereas the fire one hits me for 15 - 25. So I beat the fire one, and then I'm working on the ice one... and the music changes, indicating that the ice boss is close to death.

And then what happens? The fire boss REVIVES AUTOMATICALLY and my party members start attacking that again! WTF! Why have this kind of fight when you have an auto-targetting combat system!? In a normal RPG I would've just targeted both enemies, with one attacker taking each one while the healer heals the entire party, but noooooooooo......

Man, I was actually getting really pissed off with this fight. :lol

So I just did this fight and didn't have a huge problem with it. I did have fire magic equipped to one character. No ice magic, which made it more difficult possibly, but maybe I would have encountered the some problem you did. Perhaps the Ice boss was in the back row, my two melee characters were wielding front row weapons. I don't know. If I hadn't had fire magic I would have had to go back and get it though.

After that though,

Spoiler

because I have so much Lightning stuff my weapons are weak against Rolan, so I need to go back and reequip. I haven't tried to talk to the various shopkeepers since beating the stuff in his mind, but I should be be able to yeah? Did you talk to the golems in animal form? Otherwise they fight you. I discovered it by accident because I wanted to see the rabbit form. There are clues though. Is that the reason you said you couldn't reequip? Game is at home right now and I should be working on an essay.

 

[duckroll]

So your hate was unfounded? HAH.

The game has a single save slot. Hate is never unfounded. I'm glad it's going to bomb, and send a strong message to S-E.

 

[Oichi]

So I just did this fight and didn't have a huge problem with it. I did have fire magic equipped to one character. No ice magic, which made it more difficult possibly, but maybe I would have encountered the some problem you did. Perhaps the Ice boss was in the back row, my two melee characters were wielding front row weapons. I don't know. If I hadn't had fire magic I would have had to go back and get it though.

After that though,

Spoiler

because I have so much Lightning stuff my weapons are weak against Rolan, so I need to go back and reequip. I haven't tried to talk to the various shopkeepers since beating the stuff in his mind, but I should be be able to yeah? Did you talk to the golems in animal form? Otherwise they fight you. I discovered it by accident because I wanted to see the rabbit form. There are clues though. Is that the reason you said you couldn't reequip? Game is at home right now and I should be working on an essay.

That's probably the reason, I didn't try that. :lol Can you still reequip even if you do that? I think you can because I believe you were able to do it earlier in the game. That boss beat me the first time I fought against him but I didn't have a lot of trouble against him, actually.

 

[duckroll]

Okay, playing the game for a day was fun and all, but I think it is time to remove from the DS and put Strange Journey back in. I will return to the thread sometime after I finish SJ. Maybe next week. :lol

 

[Freyjadour]

Okay, playing the game for a day was fun and all, but I think it is time to remove from the DS and put Strange Journey back in. I will return to the thread sometime after I finish SJ. Maybe next week. :lol

Tough decision?

 

[bounchfx]

prettiest ds game i've ever seen

 

[charlequin]

- When you save at the save guy, the default ALWAYS goes to "No, don't save". Um, why?

Probably because with only one save slot, you don't get a second chance to change your mind like you normally would, is my guess.

 

[Benjamin_MFF]

Hey bearded guy, you look familiar.

Helllllooooooooo

 

[duckroll]

Been playing this on and off between SJ sessions. I think the difficulty in the game isn't very well balanced. It feels a bit too hard most of the time, and there aren't a lot of very player friendly design decisions. Because you have limited item capacity, it usually isn't wise to carry too many items with you. But this also means that when you get hit by a poison status effect, you'll be running around poisoned forever. It doesn't seem to cure itself over time, if it does it takes too long.

Another annoying thing is that there is no escape "option" in battles, instead escape is an ability only the traveler job has. This means if you're playing other jobs instead, if you run into a fight you're overpowered in, you're pretty much dead. Dungeons can be sorta mazey and long, so with the random encounters it's sometimes quite a turn off to play.

The game is enjoyable and fun when things are going good, but I don't really feel that the game is very fun when you have odds stacked against you. This is very different from games which I feel get more and more fun as they get more challenging. Here, I feel there aren't a lot of options available to the player, and so when you're not doing so well it can get annoying.

A feel other things that bother me about the game design:

- A single save slot has turned out to be a lot more annoying than I expected. Imagine doing a run through a dungeon, getting to the end, saving before the boss. Then you realize that you don't have the right spell or equipment to deal with the boss. Instead of loading a save I had when I was still in town, so I can save myself a waste of a long trek back through the mazey dungeon back to town.... I have to actually load a single save and run all the way back to town. Zzzzzzzz.

- Item cap really fucking sucks. 15 item slots per character, including equipment and spell books. No bag when you're out in the field/dungeon. That's bullshit nonsense. A mage with 4 standard equipment and 4 spells, will essentially have 7 item slots free. Not to mention, for most of the game right now you don't have 4 characters, so with only 2-3 characters (or even 1 sometimes) I've run into cases where I had to just drop potions or use them even if I didn't need them, just to free up more space to open chests or get drops from battles.

 

[souvlakispacestation]

Yes, those are the reasons why I gave up on the game. All the points you mentioned just get immeasurably worse as you progress in the game.

 

[Bebpo]

Got my copy by slow mail today and played an hour or two.

Cute game!

Not much more to say. I've seen duckroll's comments and honestly without playing much it seems like most of them seem like the frustration could be avoided by using a walkthrough/guide with a map and keeping one character in the tabibito job with "run" and one "return to town" item on you at all times no matter what. Then switching out that person's crown to whatever you really want for boss fights. While I don't think faqs/wikis/guides are appropriate for 1st play of rpgs most of the time, sometimes if they make a game FUN instead of FRUSTRATING than by all means it seems like a good decision.

And I don't see how having to drop potions is a major negative in a game with unlimited MP and cure. Unless you are stocking them up for boss fights, which in that case it makes to have a slight drawback if you do that.

 

[duckroll]

I got further in the game today. I disagree completely with using a walkthrough to play RPGs though, because if that's required to enjoy a game, I think I'm better off not playing it. Anyway, aside from the annoyances I mentioned above, the game isn't really that bad. I just wish the game design was a bit more competent, because it's really kinda dragging down what would otherwise be a really awesome RPG on the DS. The music and art direction is top rate, but the over simplistic and sometimes stupid storyline, along with the really anti-player game design drags it down to a good but not outstanding game.

Sometimes, the only solution in the game is to either grind and level up, or switch your class back to freelancer so you can die without penalty, and stock up on items when you respawn back in the previous town. It's not a game breaker, but the fact that the game allows the player to end up in unwinnable situations after saving, in a game with only a single save slot.... is just stupid imo. Anyway I don't think there's a chance I'll stop playing the game, simply because the art direction is awesome enough to make me bare with masochistic nonsense.

 

[sprsk]

I've cleared 4 "dungeons" and I haven't had any of the frustration Duckroll seems to be having. Maybe I've been lucky?

Actually though, I just had my first frustrating encounter. I'm a cat currrrrently and was equipped with the white mage crrrrrrrrown (I'll stop) and got into a fight with a hell beast and basically traded blows for like 20 minutes till I just gave up and died. I lost 20 rubies, which isn't that big of a deal really, but still, kind of annoying. Changing myself back into a traveler fixed the whole "I only do 1 damage!" problem, but I hope I can get my full party back soon so I can afford to play with the makeup of my party.

I have to say though, being able to cure every round made the last 2 boss fights extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely easy.

 

[jae]

The game really starts to shine when you finally get all four party members back together and you can actually use the crown system to its' full potential. I'm finally starting to love it.

I have no idea why they decided you should spend the first 10 hours constantly getting ripped away from teammates and into situations where you pretty much had to use specific crowns to even have a prayer of surviving.

 

[duckroll]

I'm not sure why the game is called 4 Warriors of Light. It should have been called One or Two Warriors of Light instead. I think I've been around the entire world now, and I still don't have a full party.

 

[May16]

Wife's review is up on RPG Land.

She's sitting here saying "The game has a clock, you just have to go to the windmill in the first town. You need a key for it though. The guy tells you: game time, how many battles you've been in, how many steps you've taken, etc."

http://rpgland.com/games/reviews/hikari-no-4-senshi-four-warriors-of-light-final-fantasy-gaiden/

 

[duckroll]

She's sitting here saying "The game has a clock, you just have to go to the windmill in the first town. You need a key for it though. The guy tells you: game time, how many battles you've been in, how many steps you've taken, etc."

Oh, cool! I'll be sure to check it out once.... I can return there. Hopefully it's soon, since I actually have all 4 warriors of light again, FINALLY.

 

[Hobbun]

I'm going to probably stay away from this game.

It's really a shame because I truly wanted to love this game from what I am hearing of the different classes handled through the crowns. How good the graphic and music are. However, I am just hearing too many negatives in regards to the auto-targetting. Every thing I hear of it, is the reason I hate not having full control. One of the reasons turn-based RPGs are my favorite is 'usually' you do have full control. But this definitely is not the case. And I have too many games in my backlog I can play instead.

Unless the auto-targetting is changed to full control in the NA version (I doubt it will be) I don't plan on getting this game.

 

[Pachinko]

I was reading kohlers pre-review thing on wired about this and now looking through this thread...

This game sounds awful. I mean there's hard/punishing and downright masochistic games out there but this just sounds broken. Seems to take all of my least favorite aspects of final fantasy as a series and stick them into 1 game that happens to look amazing graphically.

I wonder what the odds are of it getting tuned up for foreign release? From the sounds of things doing this would require a secondary save file , even if it were a quick save. Then you'd need to add an item bag to the game with unlimited space so you'd never have to throw anything out if you didn't want to.

I doubt that will happen though, kind of a shame, so much effort and time spent to make the game look stunning on the ds but they totally shit the bed on the most important part- gameplay.

 

[Llyranor]

Yeah, not too happy with the general impressions here. Fortunately SJ is just around the corner!

 

[May16]

I wonder what the odds are of it getting tuned up for foreign release? From the sounds of things doing this would require a secondary save file , even if it were a quick save. Then you'd need to add an item bag to the game with unlimited space so you'd never have to throw anything out if you didn't want to.

Thus making the game a total cakewalk with no required strategy or skill, and no value placed on your ability to create a functional party. Sign me up.

 

[Yaweee]

Thus making the game a total cakewalk with no required strategy or skill, and no value placed on your ability to create a functional party. Sign me up.

If removing BS gameplay hindrances would make the game a total cakewalk (which I don't necessarily think is the case), they could also make other balance changes to compensate.

The inventory management alone sounds like enough to make me pass on the game. 15 slots shared with all spells and equipment per character seems like it requires too much meaningless micromanagement to do basic things like pick up chests or get enemy drops (do enemies drop things other than gems?). There are better methods to limiting the use of expendable items.

 

[danielijohnson]

Is the game import friendly for those with a limited knowledge of Japanese?