My old school favorite, not counting Pokémon, is Monster Rancher. I always liked how raising the monsters worked in those games and battling was its own thing that you did to show off the fruits of your training.
A modern game that I loved was Monster Sanctuary. The battle mechanics are very satisfying. The battles are 3v3 and move quickly. The mechanics make for multiple viable strategies. Every monster has 2-4 skill trees and 3 forms, meaning there is a very high level of customization too. On top of that, it’s a metroidvania, so you have a map to explore and areas you can’t access until you find a monster with the map action to get you through
Seconding Final Fantasy X and Trails. Turn-based systems that remove the concept of turn cycles governed by rounds are great. These systems allow for speed stats to actually mean something and make things feel dynamic even though there are pauses every turn. It’s so much more interesting to give a ninja-like character multiple turns instead of multiple attacks to present the illusion of speed. The Atelier games have a similar system too (although I’ve heard Ryza went to something like ATB now).
If we’re including ATB and ATB-like systems, Final Fantasy X-2 and Panzer Dragoon Saga are my overall favorites.
You can look up lists for the definitive classics. I’ll throw in one of my personal favorites, Wild Arms. I still whistle the opening theme every so often.
Yay, we’ll be one game behind for almost three whole months! 🙄
How long Daybreak 2 and Kai will take for us in the West is fully up to NISA at this point. They’ve seemed to be more interested in their own greater release schedule than catching up on the series. I figure we’ll probably get Daybreak 2 in late 2025.
The Switch ports of Reverie and Daybreak 1 took at least a year, so I’m guessing this is going to end up on the next-gen Nintendo console (especially considering the Switch ports haven’t been great).
One game behind is probably the best state we ever had? I thought it get better with Ys IX, which only was a few months after the jp release. But Ys X doesn’t has a release date so far. We probably get one Trails game per year at current pace
Curious how much get into it because of the Steam release. It’s kinda late, but i guess SE plans a multi plattform release of KH4, so it’s better to have their games already on all plattforms.
Something like this is fine here, as long as it don’t get out of hand. Don’t worry about allowed or not to much, i see every post and will moderate if nessesary.
I know a person that has supported a Kickstarter game about 10 years ago. Dev is constantly Posting updates, so it’s not silent, just takes a lot time. 2 years is very short
And here I’m thinking it’s not far enough, considering how sparse the trailer was (and there’s virtually zero additional footage on their Kickstarter page). That said, they’ve already raised half of their goal. Between this and Runa, it’d be cool if we ended up with a successful western Europe JRPG dev.
I certainly see the Chrono Cross and Lost Odyssey influence. Hopefully the combat pace is quite a bit quicker than the latter.
Either SQEX thought they were going to sell PS5 systems, or they were happy with long-tail sales on timed exclusives. Maybe both. SQEX Japan has had a long history of success with their flagship titles, so I’m not surprised it took them this long.
I think the writing is on the wall for exclusivity in general at this point: unless you’re publishing the games and manufacturing the hardware, it’s not good business any more to have exclusivity. Even Sony’s first parties are struggling now. Maybe it’s not even viable unless you have crazy market share like Nintendo does.
That said, I wouldn’t lament the death of the AA game just yet. Team Asano has been a bright spot for the company, and he just got promoted. I’d be surprised if they moved him to AAA development.
The Trails games. There are about 11 mainline games available in the west now and from start to finish, they all take place in, and develop, a consistent world with its own lore, factions, characters. Even nonchalant, passerby npcs have names and personal story arcs that span across games if you care to read their text boxes. An NPC kid you might completely pass by in one game becomes a significant party member as a young adult in a later game. Newer protagonists talk about and sometimes encounter protagonists from older games… the only problem is that the series is best played from the very beginning (Trails in the Sky FC), and it takes a long ass time to catch up. That said, if you’re okay with a lot of reading, there’s nothing regrettable about it.
It’s for sure best played from the beginning. But i started with trails of cold steel 1-4 and enjoyed it so much that i just want more. Fine to start semewhere else as well.
Yeah, the age of the series is its biggest problem at the moment. Hopefully they do get around to remaking Sky.
While there might be other worlds I like a little more, I don’t think there are any in the genre as fleshed out as Zemuria. Big part of why I enjoy the games so much.
I keep waiting for them to port Trails in the Sky games. I have played the first one, and loved it, but don’t feel like playing on PC anymore, so keep postponing playing SC, waiting for some news on port, since they are pretty much the only games that aren’t on modern consoles.
I think they should remaster the Sky trilogy and sell it as a bundle, making all of FC a free “demo” just to get more people hooked. I casually enjoyed FC, but the twist at the end made me jump right into SC without even waiting.
Yeah, if it was on console, I would’ve jumped in right away too, but I was having trouble finishing it on PC, so took a break. But then then announced Trails to Azure and from Zero ports, so I just started waiting for any Sky trilogy news. Though, I am losing hope in that, and may end up just playing it on Steam… or maybe even the PSP version.
As for a remaster, I would love it, but at this time, I would even take a straight port.
A Sky remaster/remake is likely a long way off. Falcom’s still a rather small company, and their recent expansion has gone into more development of existing properties (like Tokyo Xanadu). Trails has also had a decline in Japan, which doesn’t help.
They’ve licensed the property out to mobile devs and anime, so it’s possible they’ll do the same for another Sky project. Not something they’ve done in a long time, though.
I guess I should just bite the bullet and get the game on Steam. Rest are available on Switch and PS, so it wouldn’t be much of an issue to play through them.
If you do, I highly recommend the voice mod. Sky is fully voiced in Japanese and it adds a lot of texture to the characters since it’s such a text-heavy game.
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