The Gaming Den

If you told teenage me that in the future Square, Enix and Tri-Ace would become a single entity but that he'd have no shits to give about 75% of their output he'd be completely baffled.

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Eh, the original FF7 gets a lot less interesting when you leave Midgar, and more or less falls apart by the second disc (both in terms of the story getting increasingly convoluted and the combat system becoming increasingly broken).

But what about all of the excellent mini-games? Or the ones they put in the game?

Shrapnel wrote:FUCK. ALL. MINIGAMES. EVER.

In particular infinitely fuck the Zelda Oracle of Ages Goron Dance Dance Revolution minigame.

Double fuck chocobo training in FFX.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Double fuck chocobo training in FFX.

Double fuck all chocobo training in ANY FF game.

maglag wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:FUCK. ALL. MINIGAMES. EVER.

In particular infinitely fuck the Zelda Oracle of Ages Goron Dance Dance Revolution minigame.

OH MY GOD YES. That is the worst part of any video game I have ever played. AND YOU HAVE TO DO IT TWICE! That and the Goron racing thing in Majora's Mask are the reason why I hate minigames. And Gorons, because fuck those guys.

Remind me, which was the RPG sequel that is actually worse than child leukaemia and ruined everything forever? Was it Chrono Cross? All I remember is that a couple of people hate it more than anything else and it was "a sequel to another existing RPG that was really good", and that it's very likely one that I didn't play.

Having beaten the Atelier Iris and Mana Khemia games but not being up for "PS2 era polygon janky field navigation with giant collision boxes" I thought I'd watch a bunch of runs of various RPGs I missed, and I feel I should be forewarned for whichever one it is, if the reason isn't a gameplay-based one (which I will thus be spared).

Watching Shadow Hearts: From the New World was great, I'd dig a remake with the bare minimum changes of "sharpen the text like new games do for my old eyes" and "make navigating the world a smooth experience without bumping into the corner of the 3m box surrounding a lamp-post", nothing else would be needed.

It was Chrono Cross, sequel to Chrono Trigger, andI believe it was Lago. If I'm right then that means that his rant was epic enough for me to remember it off the top of my head.

I probably don't hate all minigames. I enjoyed the card games that showed up in FF 9 and Witcher at least. There are probably some other ones I'm not able to think of right now but i do have a hate for most especially if they are required to get anything special that I really want and exponentially so if they involve anything akin to gambling (like Slot Machines).

I enjoyed the card games that showed up in FF 9 and Witcher at least.

The FF8 card game was a lot less painful for me than the FF9 one. It wasn't like, a riveting gaming experience or anything, but at least it was possible to learn and fully understand the rules in a couple minutes, making it infinitely less painful than FF9's. To this day I don't fully understand the FF9 card game, and I almost certainly never will.

Thanks, I was able to find the rant based on that. Yeah, the game looks nice enough so far, because the player in question is in the early stages.

GreatGreyShrike wrote:

I enjoyed the card games that showed up in FF 9 and Witcher at least.

The FF8 card game was a lot less painful for me than the FF9 one. It wasn't like, a riveting gaming experience or anything, but at least it was possible to learn and fully understand the rules in a couple minutes, making it infinitely less painful than FF9's. To this day I don't fully understand the FF9 card game, and I almost certainly never will.

I can't say I remember it exactly, it's been years and years since I've played it but I'm pretty sure that there were just a few pretty good cards I picked up with some decent arrows that got me through the game. It was some kind of thing where there was a board (9x9) and you had to place your monsters so that their arrows pointed to the enemies. If you managed to point your arrows at the enemy where it has no arrows you get their monster I think. I don't remember if there were any numbers involved. I can't seem to remember what happened when the cards pointed at each other. Maybe there were numbers for HP. I am pretty sure you just had to win the game by getting more monsters on the board or something.

Pretty suspicious of High School Emblem trailers and teaser info, although hopefully my issues'll be assuaged somewhat by the timeskip stuff. Basically, full VA, the ongoing waifu-ization of the series and the academy setting have me worried that the series will end up even blander than usual. At no point in a Fire Emblem game have I ever said "You know what would make this better? If more of the cast had the same age, pupils and dress code!"

I agree that the high school thing is weird even when accepting that's a common thing for RPGs and tacticals to do (Final Fantasy, Atelier ___ (via Mana Khemia), Disgaea etc. all went to that well at least once, Persona built its house in that well, then there are the one-off games like Mind Zero, Tokyo Xanadu and Trails of Cold Steel). I want to believe it's because their target audience is high school students, please let that be the reason and not anything creepy.

That said, if you don't like waifu-ization, I'd probably suggest looking into a different genre of games completely. RPGs, Tacticals and Fighting Games have planted their flag, and that flag is of a waifu. Even when games weren't super into letting you actually pick your partner to marry, there was still a lot of "here are several female characters in the party, argue with your friends about which one is your waifu".

It's not like I'm trying to be a snob here, but I'm old enough to remember some of these gags when they first happened to Tenchi, so at some point deja vu becomes inevitable. In its own way Perfect Anime Girl cliches can get as predictable as anything the Madden crew puts out every fuckin' year.

Plus, it's always just weird when these sort of wholly self-contained romances are shoehorned into video games because other media has trained me to expect consequences and dramatic and comedic payoffs and all of that good stuff. Whereas in Choose Your Waifu games new relationships typically go unremarked upon to such a degree that it sometimes clashes with the other elements of what's going on since ultimately they're just a notch on the completion gauge rather than something athat affects the group dynamic. I think this is why the closest thing to a jrpg romance I sorta liked was way back in Persona 3 when the aloof girl in your group only has dates that are barely even dates with the PC because dating makes her feel like a giant hypocrite for the way she treated her mom after her dad died. It was cliched in its own right and didn't give me any feels, but at least it accomplished the bare minimum of explaining something about the character and displaying it in a way that at least it meshed with the prior characterization of keeping people in general and males in particular at arm's length. If I remember right though lots of people hated that character because the way she treated her mom was shitty and immature. Imagine that from a teenager!

There was an Evangelion Raisng Shinji Ikari sim game with dating elements and a manga spinoff revolving around that

What. The. Actual. Ever. Lasting. FUCK.

You know, Intelligent Systems (aka the dudes behind Waifu Fire Emblem) outright said that the reason they haven't made a new Advance Wars for so long it's because Nintendo gave them an ultimatum that any new title from them would need to have waifu mechanics.

Personally speaking, it would be quite interesting to see an S-rank between a Megatank and Bomber.

Koumei wrote:I agree that the high school thing is weird even when accepting that's a common thing for RPGs and tacticals to do (Final Fantasy, Atelier ___ (via Mana Khemia), Disgaea etc. all went to that well at least once, Persona built its house in that well, then there are the one-off games like Mind Zero, Tokyo Xanadu and Trails of Cold Steel). I want to believe it's because their target audience is high school students, please let that be the reason and not anything creepy.

That said, if you don't like waifu-ization, I'd probably suggest looking into a different genre of games completely. RPGs, Tacticals and Fighting Games have planted their flag, and that flag is of a waifu. Even when games weren't super into letting you actually pick your partner to marry, there was still a lot of "here are several female characters in the party, argue with your friends about which one is your waifu".

Bullet Hell-Touhou.
Ships-Kantai Collection.

No genre is safe from Waifu-ization.

OgreBattle wrote:There was an Evangelion Raisng Shinji Ikari sim game with dating elements and a manga spinoff revolving around that

You could pick and "raise" pretty much anybody from the series.

Including the penguin, although your options were a lot more limited, including being unable to participate in the giant robot battles.

Yes, there were still giant robot battles, plus the angels attacked in a randomized order each playthrough to spice things up.

So you could raise Gendo Ikari?

I was fairly sure that existed, but also thought I might have hallucinated it based on reading the "Princess Maker 2: we're playing this as though we are Gendo Ikari" LP.

maglag: those are more stand-out examples. Basically every fighting game, tactical and RPG is waifu, but only some scrolling shooters, FPS games and spreadsheet management autism-treatment games are.

GreatGreyShrike wrote:

I enjoyed the card games that showed up in FF 9 and Witcher at least.

The FF8 card game was a lot less painful for me than the FF9 one. It wasn't like, a riveting gaming experience or anything, but at least it was possible to learn and fully understand the rules in a couple minutes, making it infinitely less painful than FF9's. To this day I don't fully understand the FF9 card game, and I almost certainly never will.

No one does, anyone that says they do is lying. Or more accurately, RNG has so much of an effect that any knowledge you have about the game is worthless because a very weak card can beat a very strong card half the time anyway.

Triple Triad has rules that are hard for a human to understand, but easy for a computer to take advantage of, but at least it's consistent.

OgreBattle wrote:So you could raise Gendo Ikari?

As a matter of fact, yes, Gendo Ikari route is a playable option.

Getting him to care about anybody besides his dead wife may not be easy though.

Koumei wrote: maglag: those are more stand-out examples. Basically every fighting game, tactical and RPG is waifu, but only some scrolling shooters, FPS games and spreadsheet management autism-treatment games are.

Heh, give it a few more years.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:

GreatGreyShrike wrote:

I enjoyed the card games that showed up in FF 9 and Witcher at least.

The FF8 card game was a lot less painful for me than the FF9 one. It wasn't like, a riveting gaming experience or anything, but at least it was possible to learn and fully understand the rules in a couple minutes, making it infinitely less painful than FF9's. To this day I don't fully understand the FF9 card game, and I almost certainly never will.

No one does, anyone that says they do is lying. Or more accurately, RNG has so much of an effect that any knowledge you have about the game is worthless because a very weak card can beat a very strong card half the time anyway.

Triple Triad has rules that are hard for a human to understand, but easy for a computer to take advantage of, but at least it's consistent.

That only happened when you spread the "Random" rule around. The game was pretty easy. They only really fucked it up when new iterations of the game appeared like on Squeenix's Final Fantasy portal.

maglag wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:So you could raise Gendo Ikari?

As a matter of fact, yes, Gendo Ikari route is a playable option.

"PILOT THE EVA, GENDO."
"Gladly. She's my wife."

Heh, give it a few more years.

That doesn't bother me personally too much. While I think the options should be there for other people, I'm happy for waifu games to flourish because A) more waifu and B) I mostly play games from over a hundred years ago anyway.

I'm cautiously optimistic as long as we don't end up with a parade of virtuous and blandly attractive teenagers with no discernible gimmicks or personality. I'm big on variety in character design so it helps that apparently women buy this shit too and there's a market for husbandos. It's like with pro wrestling; I'm straight and not against throwing cute women into the mix but Otis is a magical being and if you replace him with some rando normal person I'll be super pissed.