Which Should I start first?

No, it doesn’t close up. The vast majority of characters in the game aren’t recruitable until after the split, and a good number of them do require a bit of thinking to recruit. But of course, like everyone else, you think if the final battle in a game isn’t a chess showdown against Garry Kasparov, it can’t possibly be strategic in any way, especially not if it’s made for a younger audience.

And fuck, so story, character, dialogue, humor, style, etc are irrelvant? Who gets to decide that, you?
I didn’t decide it. I experienced it over the course of 7 or 8 play-throughs adding up to over 300 hours, many of them new game plusses.

The game is clearly not intended or marketed to be anything like that.
The game wasn’t marketed at all. I never saw a single ad or commercial for it, ever, at any time. The first time I heard about it was on the shelves of EB, and I bought it on the spot. You have no experience and no evidence to back yourself up and your lack of knowledge is pretty obvious. If you want to have fun with this game, don’t focus on plot, story, characterization, atmosphere or fighting. I’m telling you this as someone who’s probably logged 20 times as many hours on it as you have. Don’t be a douche.

So… every single game that ever sucked complete ass wasn’t really bad, it’s just that I wasn’t focusing on an tacked-on minor gameplay element which was the real point, despite every other pice of evidence available.

You know what, Suikoden IV actually rocks. I just wasn’t focusing enough on the slightly-less-than-insufferable ship chess. And so did Tales of Eternia, I just didn’t play enough Craymell Ball.

And your reward was a picture. I hope you feel good about yourself. I’ll be over there playing games that are constructed as games.

So… every single game that ever sucked complete ass wasn’t really bad, it’s just that I wasn’t focusing on an tacked-on minor gameplay element.
No, it’s that you don’t get the fucking point of anything, ever. If you ignore character recruitment in a game that’s very conspicuously about character recruitment (there are fucking <b>ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SEVEN</b> of them, that’s <b>MORE THAN POKEMON RED OR BLUE</b>) of course you’re going to think it’s shit.

The picture doesn’t matter any more than the Gold Chocobo you get from Ruby Weapon. It’s something you do just to do it, because the process itself is what’s stimulating. It’s why artists continue to make art even though very few of them break even. Your life must be pretty miserable if you’re always looking for some reward to make living worthwhile.

I’m seriously having trouble taking you anywhere near seriously here. Really. If the extremely monotonous and redundant character hunts nobody but you ever considered the single main point of the game are all that’s to be considered, it sucks even more, since the system is fucking horrible and pianfully unintuitive. Not even Pokemon gets by just by catching, and games like Suikoden let you DO stuff with the people you get. Here, you just do fetch quests, level and stalk people you’ll never talk to again.

Whatever, you know what, I don’t even care. This makes no sense.

I kinda started all them, up to the first save piont.

I started Suikoden V, and about 2 hours, 45 minutes in, and I can’t literally can’t go 10 minutes without nodding off. The Suikoden series has been one my favorites for years, and I know it’s known for having extremely slow starts before it takes off, but fuck… I haven’t played a Suikoden game in like 4 or 5 years, and the pacing is killing me. I know it will pick up, it’s already set itself up for a real interesting premise. I just want to wait for that one twist that gets the ball rolling.

I heard Nocturne is hard, and I have played hard RPGs… just how hard are we talking about? Is it more than “Oh snap, I got my ass handed to me… I’ll just level up about 4 or five more times and I’ll be in better shape” kinda hard, or is it “Well, I didn’t have the rightly fused fiends (or whatever the fuck gimmick that game has) when I entered this fight so I’m fucked” kinda hard, or is it something else? The only other SMT game I played was Persona 3, and the vibe is sorta the same (IE, in present day Japan, you’re a nameless student and your party members are other students, and you go around a map of districts in Japan, it has Nekomata, etc) are all the SMT games like that? Is Persona just another subtitle of SMT, like Nocturne, Digital Devil Summoner, etc? Well whatever. This one starts of slow too, but the mood and atmosphere are fantastic, it was much easier to sit through.

I’ve never seen a game use sprite based graphics the way Odin Sphere does. The way some of those characters fill the screen and the way they move, it’s so bizarre. I love the concept of it all taking place in the story books of a child. Very cool.

Radiata Stories… I dunno about this one. Lol, it looks like ass, even if it’s not that old, considering it’s mid-late gen PS2 game. I’m not playing it expecting something epic. I was sold on the humor and characters. Dialogue and chemistry b/t characters for me can make up for a poor story or dull gameplay. I could care less about recruiting 177 characters.

More or less, except… much worse than you’d expect. And there’s the battles where you’re killed 90% of the time for not having a skill that you could only get by overleveling the shit out of your characters.

Persona 3 is by FAR a huge leap of the “make it way less bullshitty” development, probably perfected by P4. They’re probably the first Megaten games I’ve played that do not actively try to sodomize you.

As for the subtitle… okay, history lesson:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away (Japan), a novel called Digital Devil Story was released. It sucked, but was quirky, so it was popular and spawned a video game: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, and it’s sequel, DDS: Megami Tensei II.

You can read the novel if you like, someone translated it on the net. I would recommend against it.

The games were… pretty awful, really, but after they gave up on DDS, they spawned a multiude of separate yet similarily styled franchises: Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Digital Devil Saga (Not to be confused with Story), Demon Summoner, etc.

Atlus America sticks Shin Megami Tensei in front of every single MegaTen game they port as a marketing decision, despite SMT being only one of the franchises. This also gets you some really hilariously long titles like “Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha Vs The Soulless Army”.

Gotcha. Well, I guess it makes sense for Atlus to do that if Nocturne and DDS were mild successes. Was Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. I mean did atlus bring over SMT with the subtitle of Nocturne?

Nocturne’s actually part of the main SMT series. So in Japan, it’s actually SMT 3.
This should give you the rundown on the SMT series: http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/megaten/megaten.htm
It’s fairly long, but a pretty good read.

To be fair, even if you think Suikoden did a better job of character recruitment than Radiata Stories, you still reamed me for not appreciating it in the same way Hades is doing it. :stuck_out_tongue: I’m not giving any sort of opinion on Radiata Stories, cos I’ve never even played it. All I’m saying is, it’s kind of hypocritical for you to pull this when you did the same thing with the whole “Recruiting 108 Characters IS the game” argument.

…Also. Yes, Craymel Ball. Oh my god. You never can play enough Craymel Ball, it’s just impossible.

Those were Sinistral’s words, and you’re overblowing what we all said. What I did say was that it was a fundamental and necessary part of the game. It’s not the whole game, there’d be no bloody point to it otherwise. Like I said, not even Pokemon gets by by JUST catching. It’s both gameplay and story relevant though. Recruitment in Suikoden is a vital mechanic to develop the base and therefore open up just about every other gameplay aspect and make things more readily available, not to mention there’s always options to squeeze more story from many of the characters. It is equally important as THE REST of the game. Nobody tried to convince you that there was nothing beyond it.

After you recruit someone in Radiata… nothing happens. They just stay there. The people who previously told you to go to hell are slightly nicer, but nothing else. They just go about with their lives, repeat the same line every time and do absoluetly nothing ever. By the end of the game, you can boss around essentially the whole city, but none of this is ever shown. No one ever aknowledges you recruited anyone. All you can do is use them in battle. Except you don’t, 'cause the grand majority blow ass, so you’ll use only ten at best of the 177 and the rest is just timesink. Even the two or three that SEEM like they’ve got some background are blank slates because it’s impossible to learn any more about them through any means.

The number of plot relevant characters usable is minuscle too. Jack, Ganz, Ridley… and I think that’s about it. And for the most part you only have Jack available. Even the two guys you have at the start of Vancoor vanish from the plot entirely within… two or three plot events. The rest are just background.

It’s also, if possible, way more unintutive than Suikoden. See, there’s a clock, and characters have routines. So many… actually, almost all of the characters need you to get to them within a specific timeframe. Sometimes at a specific hour. Some characters don’t even EXIST at other times, so you need to be at a specific place at a specific time with no clue whatsoever. It’s hard to describe how anal this is if you haven’t played it, but doing it without a guide is just torture. It’s already an exercise in patience as it is.

The thing is, recruiting in Radiata does absolutely nothing in regards to the rest of the game. Recruiting in Suikoden pretty much opens up every other feature available. And Hades here is asking me to not even consider plot or characters at all, despite… well, it being an action RPG.

If the extremely monotonous and redundant character hunts nobody but you ever considered the single main point of the game are all that’s to be considered
You’re a whiny little bitch for using loaded statements about things you have not experienced in any real way ever. Man the fuck up dude, and learn to admit when you’re full of shit. This is not a close argument, you’re a goddamn moron and I’m done talking to you.

And SG, to be even more fair, I agreed that the 108 characters thing was the point of Suikoden, so he has absolutely no leverage to contradict me here.

Now I’m not even understanding what you’re saying. How could I have not “experienced it”?

Also, I’d like you to go and convince Sinistral that Vagrant Story is all truly about scourging for random drops and equipment grinding to beat guys that give you better equipment. God knows that ups the gamplay time by like 150+ hours.

You do realize SE that you’re talking about a Tri-Ace game. And if you’re playing a Tri-Ace game for the plot then you are doing it wrong. Seriously, they make bad soap writers look good.

I mean these are the guys that gave us the “You’re in an MMORPG mister Anderson.”. How could anyone expect anything else from these guys?

THANK YOU for understanding at least this much. I love you Killmore.

(Ironically, the game you’re talking about is also on the original list in this thread ;P)

It figures you’d be excited by that. cough <_<;

EDIT: Final Fantasy VIII doesn’t have a great story. It has the second best story in any FF game, but that isn’t saying much (and the one with the best story is 23482304832402347823 times better :-P).

FFVIII is like an otherwise perfect face with a massive mole right in the middle of its forehead: the orphanage flashback. I swear to god if it wasn’t for that cheesy shit, people would respect it so much more. The plot elements, missions, and style and level of detail in the world is pretty compelling if you ask me. What other RPG do you get to do a clock tower sniper mission in? :stuck_out_tongue: I’ll admit that the Lunar Cry and Time Compression were pretty lame, too… and I guess a story is only as strong as its weakest element, but most of the game on it’s own was very well done.

I’m playing them for the character interaction and dialogue, Valkyrie Profile was beautiful until the fucking Dragon Ball deus ex ending. So was Star Ocean 2… well, Ashton was.

And my point was that, unlike SO3, Radiata starts WONDERFULLY. And that Hades’ claim that the recruiting was the intended or anywhere near best focus of the game, nevermind worth spending more than ten, let alone THREE HUNDRED hours (Seriously, what!?), makes about as much sense as Flavor Flav winning the presidental election.

There are more characters than Pokemon Red or Blue and almost twice as many as any Suikoden game. Saying RS isn’t about recruiting is like saying Tetris isn’t about making lines. I don’t care about your opinion on which part of the game is best. The focus is not up for interpretation. And Killmore is absolutely right, playing a Tri-Ace game for story is like playing Dungeons and Dragons for aerobic exercise.

That’s what LARPing is for.

And once again, all those other games let you do SOMETHING with those characters. You’re taking a completely pointless detail and presenting it as the proof of a dogma. What about all the combat system? The actually impressively varied combat A.I. customized for each character? The long introduction with no hint of recruiting whatsoever? The absolute disregard even in the game itself to the concept of recruitment, which in itself is only mentioned in passing after you join Vancoor? The extremely unpolished recruiting itself? The LONG slew of after-game content completely unrelated to recruitment? What the game is actually sold as?

The fact that recruiting in Radiata Stories is a long, tiresome, clumsy process consisting stalking, leveling and bringing X to Y character?

Was Vagrant Story clearly all about smithing? Because that one SERIOUSLY ups the gametime to fucking hell to get anywhere near the best weapon… which you never use because you can already kill everything. Sort of like getting Elwen in Radiata.

EDIT: Sorry, I confused you with someone else about that.