I'm sorry that SE has decided to really double down on the PS4 this gen.
Can't wait to play that myself. Though who knows when that will be...
Happy to hear you found a cool little gem of a game. I made the mistake of starting FFXII: The Zodiac Age and it's killed my productivity. Hence why I haven't updated NaNo for a few days. It's been very interesting to see the changes made to it. I'm trying to get the Sunstone currently, but instead I'm hunting Marks and checking guides to see if I can find a better weapon for Vaan. The graphical changes haven't been too noticeable for me besides colors being a bit more vibrant, the remixed OST is pretty snazzy, and so far the biggest surprises have been seeing the major gameplay changes made to compensate for the job system.
So I started this Polish game, Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. It's a Tactical JRPG with a gorgeous, super cute art style, and from the looks of it, it's not serious in the slightlest. It's pretty self-aware as an RPG and has tons of shout outs (like, once you're given food and your three responses are quoted verbatim from the scene in FFVII where Cloud eats stuff at the Wall Market), and it's nice to play something that's just not seriously at all for a change. Some cool things I noted: - It has a social link-like mechanic, with characters giving you specific benefits for ranking up their friendships. And a calendar system, so you're constantly on a timer, and have to fulfil quests within a timer to progress. So time management is a factor. Taking inspiration from a good place, tbh. - There's a town building segment right from the start and it ties heavily into that timer mechanic I mentioned. - Apparently, there's no such thing as individual levels in this game - there's only a party level, so no characters will get left behind, ever. I imagine this can help reduce grinding. - Also, apparently there's no healing during battles and the only way you can really mitigate damage from enemies is by employing shields that kind of give you an additional pool of HP over your regular HP. So far so good, and I'm fairly hooked. We'll see how good it is in the end.
It is fun fighting all of the Regeants the normal way. The last battle with Bosch is like the only one where I recommend fighting him with the Dragon Form cause he's a bit more annoying to fight without it unless you have high levels and gear.
I'll probably give it a shot, but I need a little break for now. Wouldn't want it to get stale. But yeah, playing it now, I really don't get the criticism the D-Counter gets. Honestly, I felt I could have won all those battles even without using the dragon form, but I just wanted to get it over with faster.
It's one of the reasons why I laugh when people whine about the D-Counter cause frankly there is enough in the game to curbstomp over half the game if used sparingly. Yeah, the sad truth is that your D-Ratio won't go up very much even if you do a full first playthrough with no SOL Restart. Part of that is because several of the factors that would increase your rank are just not accessible to you on a first run and since the game is much harder on that first playthrough, your time will likely be off since you'll be more cautious. On the other hand, you get access to the Dragon Blade now when you first enter Odjn's room and that weapon makes Ryu an absolute beast and just gets stronger with every playthrough.
So I finished the first fresh run of Dragon Quarte. I'm a but sad that I managed to onoy marginally increase my D-ratio. Going crazy with the dragon form from the Centre onwards was all kinds of fun.
It's not my birthday actually but thanks anyway. My birthday technically falls on the anniversary of what some might consider to be a darker revolution in Western Europe.
Will be interesting to see where it goes. I'm already having flashbacks of college courses discussing virtual worlds, and like then, I'm still baffled how people could see this idea as useful.
