This thread isn't selling it to me, I have to admit.
And Transformers is mechs punching things. The latest ones even had Dinosaur bots, which anyone under the age of seven might find exciting.
This thread isn't selling it to me, I have to admit.
And Transformers is mechs punching things. The latest ones even had Dinosaur bots, which anyone under the age of seven might find exciting.
I'd watch a Let's Play, honestly
Xenogears is about God and humanity and a romance lasting ten millenia with lots of truly profound themes of gnosticism. Mechs are just a cherry on top of this incredibly ambitious, unique game that has one of the best stories in video gaming.
Also, transformers are not mechs, you ignorant pleb. Michael Bay has nothing to do with anime mecha
Are the mechs an honest inclusion, or were they included just to appeal to the inner child of people who think mechs punching each other is the coolest thing ever?Originally Posted by Fynn
They are very story relevant and a big part of the setting and game
Doesn't change the fact that they're awful to use
THE DARN THINGS CAN FLY WHY DO I HAVE TO AWKWARDLY JUMP UP THESE HORRIBLE, TINY BLOCKS
Well, Vyk, did you play Xenoblade, and did you like it? If so, what did you like about it?
everything is wrapped in gray
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What Pumpkin said. They're a big part of the lore and work really well with the conceptAre the mechs an honest inclusion, or were they included just to appeal to the inner child of people who think mechs punching each other is the coolest thing ever?
Sorry if I sound sceptical. It's just when I think of mechs, I honestly think about boys playing with robots, going 'pew' 'pew' and think 'explosions' would be a sound career choice.
Too bad there is nearly no lore, and their implementation ruins other, more well-designed aspects of the game.
I wouldn't have minded if they were optional, but a large amount of the endgame content absolutely depend on them. They also break the flow of the game all the time, because:
The first half of the game, the game teaches you that it's fine to take risks, it's fine to do a lot of trial and error, and failing will respawn you pretty close to where you were before with no downsides. Then suddenly, mechs come into the picture, and the slightest miscalculation means that you not only have to pay money to replace the lost mech, but that you have to stop everything you were doing, go back to your hangar, fiddle with menus, then travel back to whereever it was you were before you can continue doing what you were actually interested in doing.
They're also an enormous money sink to upgrade, and you practically end up with characters that have close to 30 item slots that you need to keep track of, upgrade, and compare to hundreds of items. Now, I love having customisation options, but nearly 30 item slots for at least 4 characters leads to an enormous money sink, that again breaks the flow of the game if you want to keep your gear up to date. This is further expanded by lots of gear having up to 3 customisation slots each. It just starts getting boring after a while, as the UI for changing and comparing items leaves a lot to be desired.
Fuel consumption is another thing that breaks the flow of the game. You have to regularly stop whatever you are doing to fast travel to your barracks and spend a certain currency to refuel in order to be able to keep using them, then fast travel to the closest FT point to where you were before. It adds no actual difficulty to the gameplay itself, just another annoyance that you get very tired of after a while.
XC and the first half of XCX has a strong focus on letting you figure things out on your own, with automatic checkpoints and no death penalties if you choose a bad approach, and allows you to do everything at your own pace and retry as many times as you want, while still offering a lot of actual challenge in combat. The way mechs are implemented is sort of like taking one step forwards and 4 steps back.
Last edited by Mirage; 02-26-2016 at 05:05 PM.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
A reminder, transformers are not mechs, they are robots. Mechs are when the humans pilot them, and they're a staple of anime, and since the 90s they've all been about things like the horrors of war, humanity's hubris, what makes us human, etc.
And Mirage, WE GET IT! YOU DON'T LIKE XCX! I STILL WANNA TRY IT VERY BAD LALALALA
Oh I'm not gonna lie. The combat was surprisingly good. And I loved fighting. But I don't need it to be that good. I really got into the game because I loved the story and characters and drama and humor. All done well. And I get no sense XCX does that stuff much
I still think the same, just replace 'robots' with 'mechs', and replace 'pew pew' to 'OMG I'M INSIDE THE THING WATCH ME CRUSH THE ENEMY'.A reminder, transformers are not mechs, they are robots. Mechs are when the humans pilot them, and they're a staple of anime, and since the 90s they've all been about things like the horrors of war, humanity's hubris, what makes us human, etc.
Really, anything that mankind has made can be used to explore the 'horrors of war', 'humanity's hubris' type ideas.
It really is an excellent story if you enjoy things like philosophy, psychology, Christianity, Gnosticism, mixed with sci-fi. It's very layered and presents some interesting concepts. Some of it is pretty out there and odd, but overall it's very complex and in-depth for a video game story and I think it's pretty great. The mechs have some srs stuff, not just wow crush stuff lol type of thing and they're a pretty integral part of the plot. They even set some of the first main events in motion and it's something that's taken very seriously
The story in XCX is laughable compared to XC. The characters are less developed and instead you get two dozen pretty shallow party members to choose between, but no good interface to switch between them. You have to track each and every on of them them down in the field to add them to your party, including when you just want to swap them in to move gear from them to someone else. The combat is comparable to XC on foot, but the ground combat becomes less and less balanced as the game gives you stronger and stronger mechs, and eventually all encounters are either balanced for mech combat and really annoying (or downright impossible) to do on foot, or designed for foot combat and therefore possible to obliterate from orbit with a single strike with a mech. Boring.Oh I'm not gonna lie. The combat was surprisingly good. And I loved fighting. But I don't need it to be that good. I really got into the game because I loved the story and characters and drama and humor. All done well. And I get no sense XCX does that stuff much
Here's another fun thing about mech combat:
Some enemies must be fought in the air at high altitude. If you perform a topple on them, they start falling. As they fall, the enemies move out of combat range, and the enemies despawn, only to respawn at their original position with full health, while the fuel you used in that battle still is lost.
Even more fun is it if the enemy topples you, make you fall out of combat range, only for the battle to once again restart with the enemy at full health. This also often happens if your mech gets destroyed (even if the three party members' mechs are still working) and you start falling down faster than the enemy pursues you (if it chooses to do so at all).
Eventually, you run out of miranium (because the storage limit for this resource can be pretty low) which makes it impossible for you to refuel your mechs in the barracks, forcing you to sit around and wait for the next batch of miranium to come in from your mining probes, instead of actually doing what you wanted to do in the game.
I actually liked (loved, even) the first half of the game, and even managed to ignore many of the problems with mechs allthe way towards the last chapter, where all the shortcomings just started stacking up and annoy me enormously as i tried to do side combat in mechs. Well, that, and also the fact that i started to slowly realize that the game would end up not touching upon even *some* of the actually interesting things about the world we were on.
Last edited by Mirage; 02-26-2016 at 05:19 PM.
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
It's just that anime mechs have evolved in a different way and are currently much more associated with psychological navel gazing thanks to one particular series that shall not be named, while transformers have been tainted by The Bay.I still think the same, just replace 'robots' with 'mechs', and replace 'pew pew' to 'OMG I'M INSIDE THE THING WATCH ME CRUSH THE ENEMY'.A reminder, transformers are not mechs, they are robots. Mechs are when the humans pilot them, and they're a staple of anime, and since the 90s they've all been about things like the horrors of war, humanity's hubris, what makes us human, etc.
Really, anything that mankind has made can be used to explore the 'horrors of war', 'humanity's hubris' type ideas.
Seriously, what's so wrong with someone building this big story by incorporating mechs into it? Play the game yourself and come back to me then, we'll see if you've changed your mind
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