There's something novel and interesting about the ways that Underrail allows for a lot of different viable builds, but demands you focus almost immediately. I played like five or six hours of it before getting distracted by something else, but I definitely want to revisit it.
As just an observation, I kinda love that literally no one has thoughts on Underworld Ascendant, which is how you know despite it being not terrible, is still maybe Peak Dubious RPG. well, not quite as peak as what's left on the wheel. Gotta figure out how to make Konung work in a window.
I always wondered about The Last Remnant while it sat in my Steam library for years.
Wonder no longer! You probably™ don't need to play it. In fact... maybe at some point after this season ends I'm gonna make a short primer of RPGs I think people *should* check out.
The Last Remnant's combat systems actively hate you and only get worse. I don't want to be told what attacks to use. I want to pick. And at no point is that plot interesting or the world in the slightest bit likable. It is JRPG - The Game, but with a unique sorta-kinda-RNG system that feels like the video game equivalent of a bowel obstruction. A fun obstruction.
Jesus, that game.
A ringing endorsement! FWIW I think I might conceptually like that style of large-scale macro-management more than the likes of... I dunno, FF XIII? It's more the part where the game doesn't explain itself and the UI is a nightmare and you get the strong impression that somehow, someone in a board room in Tokyo thought this would be more appealing to Xbox 360 owners.
Really can't blame you for bouncing right off of Last Remnant; there's some really neat stuff there but maaaaaaaaaan.
In the console versions of it the difficulty was super borked, as well; in a similar vein to the way Saga Frontier's works. You had a battle rank, which determined enemy difficulty, and said rank ranked up regardless of the strength of enemies you defeated. Anyways, this isn't really a problem until a short point in the game like 30-40% through (I think) where you have to do a small dungeon with just Rush and Emma. My battle rank was too high and it was effectively impossible to advance in the game.
I'd love to see you try out Resonance of Fate, though. Speaking of weird Square stuff from that time (not published by square) JRPG's from that time, Tri-Ace went bananas with that game, and it does a good job in showing off most of its mechanics very quickly, in all their ridiculous glory.
Resonance of Fate is on a short list for sure, especially given that I don't need to dig into weird secondhand holes to get a copy. Just... wait for that remaster to drop in price to an appreciable level. It's got gun customization and weird board game mechanics and the rare Nolan North/Anime crossover.
Its not the boss that everyone else had trouble with I did (its the one after that...probably should have more people learn rez!)
Still, its the kind of "lets do something new" school of RPG battle system from Japan that doesnt get seen much since 2010, and that's by default good.
I think it might be something we eventually get into for our next Grandia podcast, but for as much as I like a good menu-based JRPG combat system in abstract, there's absolutely something to be said for things that challenge that baseline. Just... you know, there's also a lot of bad action-combat JRPGs to flip that coin around.
@dochaus: I think you're accidentally re-selling me on this game, which was, and should not be your intention. I'm not gonna play any more of The Last Remnant, I think. I have other places to indulge degenerate weird JRPGs, like playing Shadow Hearts on stream or... well, I think you'll see what some of my picks are for the podcast once we finish Grandia II.
Thankfully I somehow missed all of the backlash to Siege of Dragonspear. I guess because I just got it and played it and forgot about it because...largely...it was not good. I also didn't know about all of that WotC shit, so this was informative on a number of levels!
Also, um, that character/inventory screen from Battlespire is...SOMETHING.
It might be something that comes up, either in an inevitable tabletop RPG focused podcast episode or another D&D-adjacent write-up, but I will at least give the D&D side of Wizards of the Coast "kudos" for fucking up on the exact same things in the exact same way with stuff like inclusivity and "racial essentialism". I'm not gonna point any fingers at any specific people, but you get the impression there are people who absolutely mean well at that company who are constantly stifled by the more conservative elements of management (and like 40+ years of franchise baggage from Papa "Women have lower maximum strength" Gygax and his riffs on pulp novels from the 50s and 60s.)
Meanwhile, based on everything I've heard from my "Magic Friends" MtG has more-or-less been a variety of disasters for the past few years from set to set.
That Battlespire stuff was rough. It's so far removed from what I think of when I think of The Elder Scrolls. And also it's bad.
It's also Baaaaad! Like, there's absolutely a world where a more focused Elder Scrolls game could be good. But it turns out making a multiplayer-focused Dungeon Crawler is not it!
On Siege of Dragonspear, I wonder how after so much time, many of the people which still plays or played the previous games, likely played a heavily modded version (think that one of the major mods was one that sort united both games, at least that the one I used when I last played), meaning that their saves would be incompatible (if you can transfer, but even recreating the character might be difficult), so before you start it, you might need a clean install and save to play and how this affect people trying the game.
Because at least for me that was what happened, well this and the fact at the time I was not much in a mood for this kind of game or to replay the older games.
Now on Battlespire, that was maybe the worst paper doll I ever saw, like the character model pose is strange, the clothes all appear off scale and off set...
Ah, that wouldn't surprise me that SoD broke a lot of modding stuff for the Enhanced Edition. I still think, for what it's worth, that the EEs are probably the best way to play all of those Infinity Engine games (you can maybe make an argument for Icewind Dale given some of the changes the EE makes) but modding is absolutely a big deal in parts of that community and I bet stuff like that breaking is very frustrating.
Anyway, to be perfectly honest like one of the biggest reasons I wanna play through all of Siege of Dragonspear aside from my own morbid curiosity is so I can finally import that Fighter/Mage/Thief character into BG2, five years after my last replay of BG1. To this day I've still never seen what they did with the Enhanced Edition of 2 and ToB, and I'm "interested" in finding out. Maybe one day.
And yeah, the paper dolls in Battlespire are... Well, they're something.
I got a few minutes into Drakensang before realizing it wasn't going to work out between us
Real Dubious RPG-ers play at least three hours of Drakensang before realizing that they're wasting their lives. PFFT cute anime girls doing alchemy? Why not play a worse version of Neverwinter Nights 2 with a more impenetrable and Deutsche ruleset?
(in all seriousness you made the right call there)
You might’ve sold me on making this the next Tales game I play after I finish Berseria. Obviously I can’t speak to *when* that’ll be, but I like a good chain combo as much as the next wannabe Dante.
I was very tempted to pick Graces F over Zestiria for this season of "the wheel." Especially given how the introductory hours of the game involve dumb children who wouldn't know a LIMBs system if it bludgeoned them over the head. However, given that I wanna play and potentially stream Graces F "4 realsiez" at some point I figured the more generally disliked game would suffice.
well, that and I'm like 20 hours into Berseria and having a pretty good time.
@bigsocrates: I'm sorry that I've been beaten by the dark overlords at GoodRPG. I will work in earnest to regain your trust and the Dubious RPG brand reputation as I seek out more weird, obscure, and questionable examples of the Role-Playing genre in the future.
As a consolation, know that in the future we have some truly *extra* RPGs to look forward to. The Elder Scrolls Battlespire is, uh, a thing. Boy, it's absolutely a thing. So is King's Quest VIII, which is apparently as much of an RPG as it is an adventure game, and therefore qualifies for this feature. Konung is the first Russian game to make its way onto the Wheel, assuming I can get it to play nicely with OBS (if not, might have to try Konung 2 instead.) Also I picked the Final Fantasy that gives people actual motion sickness, another early 360 JRPG stalwart and the titty anime vampire souls game by way of God Eater.
It may not belong on the wheel, but accidentally playing a decent game once in a while is probably very important for maintaining your dubiosity-compass.
Also, Sophia calling Fayt's parents aunt and uncle might just be a translation thing. In some Asian cultures (like Japan, I believe), folks refer to non-related persons who are older than them with titles (like aunt/uncle) that other cultures use only with family.
At least, that's what I hope is happening here.
I have to assume that's a thing, right? That it's more a translation quirk than anything? Anyway it's nice to be proven wrong once in a while. Like by no means does Star Ocean III seem like some sort of amazing game, but there's nothing specific about it that puts it in association with the likes of... that Game of Thrones RPG that Focus Home published.
Might have to wait for me to really start digging into that early HD era goldmine for the real dubious JRPG pay-dirt. Eternal Sonata has been discussed.
Considering my rabid fandom over Star Ocean III, I'm slightly offended it was even considered for a dubious title. It's good to see it was rescinded of such. Now my Roger action figure can stop crying.
I dunno if I met Roger yet, but I did meet Cliff during my time with the game and that guy seems alright.
Yup and yup. "How about more monster closets since we're dead set on more floors but have ran out of time and money for new enemy types?" Shame, as the steampunk atmosphere was killing it.
Anyhow, you aint deep enough into SO3 to get the dubiosity that is that game's handling of ally AI, stat point allocation, crafting (which was a massive leap backwards from SO2's smorgasbord of wonders), how the game can only be played when the rules are ignored, and how Tales of Graces f did that what they were attempting here on combat but good.
I was very much digging Vaporum right up until it felt like the game had run out of ideas. It seems entirely *fine* but going back to Grimrock II was a pretty hard contrast. Goddamn it, we're never gonna get another dungeon crawler of that caliber again, at least not for a while. (unless there's something in the indie scene I haven't discovered yet.)
Ah, so Star Ocean III is one of those "the subsystems are trash" sort of games, hm? Well I'll give it credit for not immediately bludgeoning me over the head with the worst loot system in the world like Tales of Zestiria did. Unless I can convince Jeff and ZP to do it for the podcast, I think Star Ocean III definitely falls more into the "I would play more of this in the hypothetical" camp, rather than the "I need to play more of this" camp. Graces F tho...
Star Ocean 3: I wouldn't have expected you to reach the part I gave up at, since it's something like twenty hours in, but I recall there being a juncture where healing was prohibitively expensive for some reason and a recent story twist had significantly boosted the local enemy difficulty. There was also some crafting mini-game thing involving creating new inventions for prizes that other NPCs always seemed to get to first, and all those alerts got annoying in a FOMO sense, and then of course the constant hugging the contours of every map to get the 100% exploration bonus. It all started to grate after a while. I probably should've stuck with it to see that wild ending, but I suppose I had better things to do.
Anvil of Dawn: Oof, yeah, that game was just a lot to deal with. They built RPGs to last back then for sure, but those dungeons burn through most of their ideas early and then it's just hours spent running around in circles filling in the map (though maybe not in the literal Star Ocean 3 sense) and abandoning half of everything you find because there's no room in the inventory. I agree it could've done with a party system, or something like Lands of Lore's "revolving chair" of companions for a bit of tactical variation.
Arcana: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura: Have fun. As you no doubt recall from a couple years back, it really wasn't my cup of tea. Someday I'll figure out what other CRPG nuts see in it.
I feel like I've reached a point with Arcanum where I can't fully let go of the idea of beating it, even though I've played the introductory hours of that game like a half-dozen times at this point. I also think it'd make for great podcast material, because my brain is broken and now very much views potential uses of my time as avenues for #content.
DMC 1 feels like a proof of concept for the series (and, to some extent, the entire genre.) DMC 2, on the other hand, is just a baaaaaad time. Dread it, run from it, it arrives all the same.
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