@slag It's definitely more a matter of having limited funds than anything else; if I had more expendable income I'd definitely be playing more new stuff. And I know there are plenty of games that come out at cheaper prices, but I still tend to buy older stuff because I've been thinking about buying it for months or years at that point.
@arbitrarywater If someone with a Fire Emblem avatar commented on this list, they're either someone I blocked a long time ago or deleted their comment or had their comment deleted, 'cause I never saw anything like that.
I am someone that is not very good at Fire Emblem games. I have gotten slightly better, but I've never been great at them and find the tougher entries in the series to be almost unmanageable unless they have a means to grind in some way. I wish I was better at them; I had to use the DLC to get through Conquest. It's kind of on me, because I am unwilling to play with "phoenix mode" because I think being able to let your characters die makes FE a fundamentally different game, but I've never been able to back that up by actually playing the real experience with any sort of skill. I still like them a lot, though.
I had no idea 8-4 did Awakening. That might be why I found that game's writing more tolerable, even though it seems to be tonally very similar. Fates feels like it is trying too hard to be quirky, while at the same time feeling more generic than even the blandest Tales game.
Good luck with that ToS sequel. I really, really did not like it. I did not like its weird retcons, I did not like the character motivations, and yeah, the voice cast being different for some characters undermined its ability to effectively cash in on nostalgia to compensate for its myriad weaknesses.
@loamlife: There is actually a GBA rerelease of that game that totally made it out in English. I could probably find my copy of it right now if I wanted to, though I don't own a platform to actually play it with anymore. I never finished it, personally, but other people on the internet say it's a good game.
They also apparently remade it for mobile at one point, and it was a disaster. A weird, microtransaction-infused disaster. It is no longer available on mobile platforms and honestly there's not much of a record that it ever existed in the first place, but I remember reading about it when it came out.
As someone who has spent way, way too many hours with this game, I definitely find myself overlooking the pacing issues. Even having played through the game fairly recently, I completely failed to notice them. That's more because I play this game at least once a year and know all of the beats by heart than because it doesn't have them. But I now play through the game in weird ways, either going for specific titles or just tackling things in ways that I'm less used to, so it's pretty easy to be blind to pacing problems.
That said, that bit at the end is weird, and even stood out to me when I played through it the first time, though I was probably 12 and had infinite time and finding out there's more game in there felt like a positive back then rather than the bizarre, tacked on bit that it was. In a game that did not need to pad out it's length (it's already long enough) that part feels completely pointless. Though I know why they did it, it's basically the game coming to a screeching halt and saying "this next part is gonna suck, go do sidequests for a while." But then even that doesn't really hold up, because a fair amount of the endgame sidequests require you to have gotten to the room before the final boss before they can be completed at all. It's a weird section of the game.
I have about a million things to say about this game (as you already know after reading my own blog posts about it) but I'll keep myself restrained and just say that I'm totally on-board with everything you've said here. As far as "traditional in every sense of the word" JRPG games go, (as you mentioned, it hits all those notes down to the "flying airship halfway through" bit) I think this game is one of the best.
The sequel is rough. It exists solely for fan service, and then fumbles all of it, thus making its entire existence meaningless. Xillia is also kind of a low (in my opinion.) I think Vesperia is probably the next best after this one, though you mentioned not platinum-ing this game... Vesperia has some of the worst achievements in the entire 360 library. There's an achievement that literally requires you to move on the world map for aboooout 8 hours straight. It's pretty obvious that they accidentally added a zero to the amount you had to travel to unlock it; it's unbelievable. But Vesperia has a really rad protagonist, and also plants some of the seeds for the stuff I really like about the most recent Berseria. It also has a similarly vibrant color pallet, which is something that just sort of passively makes Symphonia more pleasant to play.
Awesome, glad the Titan's Mitt finally showed up. Totally forgot it was possible to get to that gravestone without it; there's a nice sort of irony to it being hidden in a place it's easy to think is inaccessible without it.
You're probably already past this point, but you also need the Titan's Mitt for Misery Mire. And one of those medallions, though I forget which one. But you have to use the Ocarina to get to the spot where you can use the Titan's Mitt to lift the rock to reveal the Dark World portal so you can reach the entrance to Misery Mire. But the entrance to Misery Mire is blocked off and doesn't open without one of the Medallions. So to get to Misery Mire you actually need to luck out and find three major items. Which is probably a bit demotivating.
One the bright side, if you absolutely can not find the Book of Mudora, but do manage to get the Ocarina and Titan's Mitt, you can still make progress even without access to the Misery Mire dungeon. You can use the mirror while in the swamp to appear in a spot that is past the roadblock in the desert, thus allowing you to explore that dungeon. And since you already have that dungeon's item, you'll be able to access everything in it.
It may be time to start taking some trips into dungeons you know you can't finish yet. You can access parts of the Skull Woods dungeon without the Fire Rod; in fact, I think most of it is accessible, and the Fire Rod just lets you access the last two or three rooms. There are definitely some chests in that dungeon.
I'm trying to think of some obscure ones off the top of my head, but it's tough.
(If you can't tell, I am thoroughly enjoying this feature and am writing all this so you don't hit a dead end. I have attempted several randomized runs and always dead-ended.)
Gonna block out stuff that I think you might figure out on your own eventually, but the weird Randomizer quirks I'm leaving unblocked. But if you're about to give up, take a look at the blocked ones. They might all be useless anyways, actually.
But... this one's simple, so I won't block it out either. And you may have already gotten it. There's that mushroom in the Light World forest, if you haven't hit that spot yet.
I think there are some chests you can access in Death Mountain with the Hookshot. That or by bouncing off a wall with the Pegasus Boots to sail over a pit. But I don't remember if that's actually necessary in that area or not. Probably not. Also you probably got them.
When you went to King Zora, did you get the item on the ledge in that general area? That might be one... hmm.
This one is hard to know about unless you know about Randomizer specifically, so I won't block it out either. It's information the game will not give you on it's own, period. The chest game, the one where there are many chests, not just three; that has an item. You get it guaranteed on your first play, since if the special item happens to be rupees there's no way of knowing if you got it or not. So it's a guarantee.
There's a wall you can blow up in the old lady's house in Kakariko, but you probably got that one.
There's a cave in the Desert with a bombable wall inside. I think you got that one though.
There's a stump in the Master Sword forest you can go into with a single item? Pretty sure you hit that too. Just scraping my brain for anything at all.
Another one I'm not blocking because I think knowledge of the actual game might be a hindrance here rather than a help because Randomizer changes a few things to make it possible to play. There might be something in the witch's hut. You may not need to trade the mushroom to get the item from her in Randomizer.
In the dark world, the Blacksmith's hut has a purple chest in it that follows you. I thiiiink you can get to it? If you can reach there, take that chest to that silent guy by the desert for an item.
So you need diamonds 5 & 6 to get the big bomb, but apparently you also need to reunite the blacksmiths. So if you ever have all those conditions met, that big bomb will net you two items.
If I had played a run recently, I'd probably have something else, but I'd be thoroughly stumped if I were in your position. Maybe try warping out of the Dark World in some suspicious spots, I know there's, like... something you can get for that.
@mento: Yeah, me resorting to that glitch in particular may be part of the reason I've never been able to finish a run -_- I also use the glitchless option when making my files, and think I'm somehow getting one over on the game, but instead get hopelessly lost.
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