I always try to get people to play The World Ends with You. Mainly if JRPGs come up as a topic. It's one of my favourite games of all time, and one of the only JRPGs I still unreservedly love. Sure it's corny in the way a lot of JRPG stories tend to go but there's so much to weigh up for it (if that's even a negative to you). The setting felt fresh for once, being in modern day shibuya instead of a fantasy world. The soundtrack is really nice and fairly unique too. Reminds me a lot of the persona soundtracks for example, being more in the J-pop direction.
I think the main reason people didn't stick with it if they played it in the first place is that the battle system forces you to multitask in a way most games really don't make you, so it's kind of like learning to do something new rather than applying old knowledge to a new game. After a while you get good at it though, and the game offers you so many options to tune the battles to your exact taste regarding both frequency of battles and the risk/reward when you're in them.
If only Giant Bomb had this attitude towards Monster Hunter.
And honestly, I would argue it's actually easier than both those titles. It's far, far less frustrating and easier to get into. The only hard part of that game is understanding a monster's AI and patterns.
Hell, it's far more satisfying as well. When you beat a monster it's because you have not just outsmarted it, but also out-maneuvered it. It has very little of the random traps and other bullshit you find in Dark Souls and Spelunky.
I agree with you on the "GB should try and get into monster hunter again at some point" angle, but saying that Dark Souls doesn't requite maneuvering and and that it has "random traps" is selling the game short by a ton.
Nice writeup Patrick. I catched some of your streams and it was enjoyable as hell most of the time. The people crying "OP build" have probably not played it, or have not played it through in a normal fashion in a long time. Dark souls doesn't really expect you to be a master player from square one, it just expects you to learn from mistakes and the environment, and that's what makes it amazing to me.
Once you scale the learning curve and get good at the game, it's not that hard anymore. It's kinda by that point you start understanding that the game isn't at all unfair as long as you're being observant.
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