Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Mischief Maker would hate it

[quote name="FABIO"]He hates standard turn based jRPG combat and teenagers standing around overstating the obvious. The game has both in spades. At one point, just like Xenogears, the nihilist baddie captures our heroes without a fight and strings them up on crucifixes =( [quote name="Lizard_King"]If anything, I thought the way xp balancing was handled relative to your level was very smooth, and meant that really only completists needed to grind for anything (and it's definitely there if you want the alternate challenges). The game gives you instantly diminished returns for not taking risks, and at most you have to one or two runs between full moons to get to the next boss. [/quote] You get the most experience for rushing to the highest possible floor and grinding there, but if you do that then you miss out on pokemon exclusive to a couple floors. Also the "risk" is getting wiped out by the insanely unforgiving system regarding the main character ( who can be killed in 2-3 attacks, snuffed out by an instant death spell (losing a homunculus to a random encounter is almost enough cause to reset), or disabled by status ailment rendering your entire party brainless) , making you lose all progress in your grinding run. You also cannot pull out of dungeons whenever you wish, and must pray to the random number generator to throw you an access point or survive to the next boss floor teleporter. [quote]Now, I witnessed the grinding potential when my wife beat the ever-loving shit out of this game, but even then I thought it was pretty kind and modern-feeling. There just aren't many games in a traditional turn-based framework that do the sort of rock-paper-scissors + winner takes all moments as well as this one. [/quote] What strategic elements are these? It never goes beyond the usual jRPG combat tropes, but even Final Fantasy X had more depth to combat. Hit every enemy once with their weak element until they're all knocked down, hope the main character doesn't get hit with insta-kill/charm/fear/knockdown/falldown, pray your party members do what you want them to through voodoo commands. All it takes is the main character getting disabled while you have the wrong commands and you're fucked. Back to the start screen. [quote]I could definitely see Fabio fucking it up though. It's very easy to assume that the reason a boss is hard is because you don't have enough levels, when brute force is rarely the best solution. You're either down with the demon pokemon or you're not, and if that shit doesn't interest you there are going to be some difficulty walls that you bounce off while the answer is ten minutes of experimentation away. Plus, it hurts to get killed by a laughing table. [/quote] The entire pokemon fusion system is extremely vague. The main problem is it makes all the information so ridiculously difficult to get. You are shown what skills new pokemon will receive, but not what those unintuitively named (Marakaja, Diaharma, Megideloan? awesome!) skills do. You are not even told what those skills do once you obtain them on the pokemon screen, but must go to a skill menu where it lists every single skill all your pokemon have put together, but will not tell you which pokemon has that skill without going back to the pokemon screen to cross reference. You are not told what each skill does in battle without first switching to that pokemon. And even keeping track of the all pokemon isn't a sure thing because the game gives you zero information about bosses. You can never scan them, must experiment with trial & error (10-45 minute setback for each error) and hope that one of them isn't reflected back to kill or disable the main character. Often the bosses will have new or unique super killing attacks that give no hint what damage type they are so another tactical option for choosing the right pokemon is abandoned to rote trial & error. There's just no excuse for the lack of checkpoints on story bosses. It's the reason all sane people gave up on Grand Theft Auto and switched to Saints Row. To hail it as rewarding thinking outside the brute force box is the same garbage eaten up by Demon Soul fans. [quote]Then again, I thought the story was great in that it had teenage protagonists and dating sims and all of that and somehow avoided making it a miserable experience. Certainly, it's light years ahead of the sort of drivel that passes for a Final Fantasy plot and character menagerie. [/quote] You level up pokemon by hanging out with characters after school, and unfortunately the power of each person's pokemon group is directly proportional to how annoying they are (the most powerful belong to a speed-eating foodie). They should just give Elizabeth her own game.[/quote]