funbil

Appreciate that you did explain yourself well and gave exanples of your issues even for a long post. Was a intresting read! I tried a few hours of Sea of stars not feeling it at all. Ocotpath 2 is fantastic so far though.

Omori and Lisa the Painful are pretty fantastic turn based JRPG's.

Big agree haha

I remember seeing your "I hope Sea of Stars is better than Chained Echoes" post and thinking "uh-oh". The wasting time part is exactly why I lost hope for this game during its development, every gif they showed was some super beautiful animation of super empty slow gameplay. Not that it's super important, but more, if that's what they're focusing on, it's worrying. And the demo confirmed this completely (the only surprise was how fast swimming was! :D)

Anyways, that was just to say: big same for the small parts I've experience through the demo. As for the rest it was very interesting, great review. Crazy that they've both redone Chrono Trigger, but also their Messenger twist in a way?

Any thought about the level design in dungeons? That's another part that didn't really impress me in the demo, kind of mostly automatic puzzles, like a slightly more involved tight rope animation.

what a shame, it looks so nice on the surface, but i had my reservations from the get go, sad to see they went the uber referental route.

had been looking at this and chained echoes for a while, but your last post about cheeky dialogue and this excellent review has at least convinced me to put this one off for a long time. great read

there's nothing that tilts me more than a RPG that wastes my time with its gameplay. glad I skipped this one

the disco elysium of jrpgs where the crono is a drunk amnesiac for whom you have to bend reality to save from death after he sits in an uncomfortable chair? 🤔

we have the disco elysium of jrpgs it's final fantasy 2 for the family computer

Unfortunate. I really thought The Messenger was a stellar game (apart from the writing) and was hoping that they would shore up their weak point especially when tackling a genre that heavily depends on good writing. I'm a little biased as I already don't care for Chrono Trigger, but I really wish teams who clearly have some creativity and skill would stop trying to deliver "their take" on classics.

aw man, this game seemed cool from the demo but i guess i'll save my thirty bucks

There is something depressing and familiar about seeing a game gain viral attention by focusing on gorgeous graphics while skimping on things like combat design, scriptwriting, or narrative design. It makes sense why that works, but like... this game sounds extremely forgettable.

Excellent post and analysis. Thanks for writing it up!

Man, it kinda sucks SoS turned out like this. The Messenger was pretty great, aside from the self-aware dialogue but that was pretty easily ignored. I don't get the urge to throw in wink-wink-nudge-nudge writing, just Get Silly and believe in it!

oh thank you this really crystallizes why i dont want to get this game-- i got a bad vibe from dialogue in the demo that sort of caused me to snap-judge it and ive been trying to figure out since if i was being unfair or if this was just a canary i needed to rescue from this coal mine.

thinking again about how the first time i played Chrono Trigger i had 1. most of the game spoiled thanks to game magazine coverage and 2. a nonexistent reference pool for JRPGs and JRPG tropes

as such, yes, i always found Magus fuckin' cool, but i didn't appreciate in full just what the fuck his deal was

he is the classic generic JRPG fantasy villain with a 180-degree twist

he's positioned as the Demon Lord (his name is literally 魔王 in the Japanese version!) trying to take over the world, and Lavos is basically named as the apocalyptic god he's trying to summon

but he doesn't give a shit about world conquest, or even the demons looking to him for leadership

all he wants is his chance to take his revenge against Lavos for destroying his civilization and sending him spiraling across time, and literally everything he has done has been in service to that end goal

and it's fucking brilliant, and the best part is, it all still lands even if you know jack shit about JRPGs

and never once did the writers feel compelled to go "oh hey, you know, this would be such a shocking twist if you were expecting it to go like Dragon Quest 1 or something"

the whole fucking arc stands on its own merits

the way i've seen people praise the writing in this game and GARL of all fucking things

Read this for the keighleys rechost and it reminded me of someone's review (maybe austin walker's) of Forspoken. Particularly the parts where the story undercuts itself by being to referential and not taking itself seriously.