Well my impatience was kinda rewarded with a +Atk/-Def Summer Inn. Not the best of Banes but a Def forge will fix that right up. And he only took 75 Orbs to pull (with most of the rest of my pulls amounting to trash like Saizos and Marias).

Unfortunately, they're also rerunning last year's Summer banners to further bleed me of Orbs. Failed to get anything useful out of either of them even if they got 9 Orbs out of me (I really wanted that Summer Leo).

Apparently this GCN will be Valentia themed, but really, that generally means nothing at this point (unless they include a free 3 star Tobin or finally bring in the Kliff). It also might mean that the next Legendary is Fire Alm (although he doesn't fit the Res buff all that well (nor does any other Valentite, lol)).

oh, interesting. i stopped checking this forum a while ago and then came back a month or two ago and was kinda sad about how these forums seem so dead, and it seemed weird to me since the site itself seems to be doing well what with the regular content and podcasts and whatnot. i guess everyone went to discord. i've been meaning to install that anyway since i've had a few people suggest i join (mostly people i've played cs:go with). i guess i'll get on there at some point..

i'll always miss this style of forum but i think it's safe to say it's becoming more and more irrelevant with time :(

I'm currently playing through Berseria myself, actually.  And I have to say that while I am generally liking the game so far the endless fields (and caves...so many caves...) of enemies really does wear on me at times.  It's like they heard the complaints about the mediocre dungeons in Xillia (maybe Zesteria too but I haven't played that one) and said, "OK we'll make everything bigger".  Not more interesting, not more content, just bigger.  And filled with endless swarms of the same enemies which you feel like you shouldn't even try to avoid because it takes so many battles to get all those equipment skills.

Graces (I always seem to come back to Graces...) actually handled this kind of stuff really well in my opinion.  It didn't have a world map or anything but most of the 'overworld' links between cities and stuff were quite short.  Too short to be truly realistic, honestly, but who really cares.  On the other hand it has some huge, expansive, and actually interesting dungeons filled with puzzles, exploration, etc.  Didn't hurt that when you did fight enemies it was with the best battle system the series has produced to date.  Yeah, that was a really good game...

The plot in Berseria is definitely one of the most interesting I've seen in a Tales game but it feels like they still don't know how to get the gameplay right...even though they've gotten it right before but decided to abandon that direction for whatever reason.

BTW, is it really necessary for the final dungeon to be this epic 2h long labyrinth every time?
I wouldn't mind a more streamlined dungeon when I'm trying to push on and finish the game.

Now that is crazy talk.  Epic final dungeons is one JRPG tradition I actually like!  It's the final dungeon, it should be epic.  Just hopefully make it a more interesting location than the endless basically identical caves I've been going through so far...

Quote from: Grainofariver on Yesterday at 06:44:34 AM

I don't dislike the hoverboard, although you get it far too late. I know the days of getting boats and airships which gradually open more of the map are long-gone, but I feel like, if implemented well, the hoverboard could fill that role. In theory it somewhat did by making travel quicker and opening new areas, but it felt a bit like an after-thought (not dissimilar to using the elemental abilities in Zestiria: that felt like such wasted potential).

Frankly, I think going pseudo open world is what hurt the dungeon and field designs of the Tales series.  I think the best thing the developers can do is to go back to a separate navigable world map with distinct dungeon and village zones.

Its not the open world aspect as it is having battles take place on the field rather than their own distinct battlefield. It was atrocious for Zesty and not much better for Berseria (since at least they did a better job of designing field/dungeon maps to accommodate battle arenas; even if it led to all of the dungeons looking like an interconnected series of boxes; at least compared to Zesty's "what could possibly go wrong?").

Playing through this game now, and not only are some locations stupidly huge *cough*that temple you face Artorious in*cough*, but generally speaking your land speed travel is slow enough that if an enemy gets a bead on you, unless you get outside of their aggro zone, you're likely getting into a battle since they're generally faster than you (and the other movement speed upgrade(s?) don't really do much of anything, especially when later enemies scale with it).