I remember hearing something about this game being a remake of two different games (the original and its sequel) put together. That might explain the shift in quality between the two halves.

Urgh...Welch. When she was just kind of randomly there (and very easy to skip by accident) in the remakes of 1 and 2, she was fine. She was okay in 3 as well since her shtick was basically "She makes things! And waves around a plastic hand-on-a-stick for some reason, but has little to no impact on anything otherwise." In 4, her design is completely changed to one that doesn't quite work, her motion capture is just weird and jerky, making really strange poses at random when the other characters don't tend to get that bad, and she takes the cloudcuckoolander thing way too far. There's a difference between "interestingly quirky" and "oh my god she's insane get me out of here".  It really doesn't help that the game keeps dropping hints that she isn't actually supposed to be the liason for the protagonists.

I think that the motion capture was really one of the things that killed 4 for me. It was really, really bad. Unrefined motion capture is like Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, where the characters kind of jitter around and they over-emote a bit. Essentially, the data wasn't edited enough. (Namco got pretty good at it later). Bad motion capture involves movements that look really alien and uncomfortable without a good reason, and SO4 is full of that. It doesn't help that if there's something on the characters that should move (like the angel girl's wings) but that can't be motion captured just sat there. Resonance of Fate has a few bits like that, but overall it's pretty good. It came out after SO4 though, so I think they learned from it.

Quote from: Champlooz on April 04, 2015, 12:46:07 PM

What is a good game to start with the Atelier series?

I always avoided them so far because I didn't like the time management, but I didn't find it that bad in Type-0, so I might give this series a try! Are the time mechanics similar to those in Type-0?

Should I just get the released game for PS3 and go from there? I believe there are some games that are sequels to another but not all of them, right?

If you want to go pre-time management, PS2 Atelier Iris games (1 and 2, not so much Grand Phantasm) are great.

If you're okay with Time Management ... yeah, start with Rorona and go forward.

Slight correction...start with Rorona Plus. It's a big improvement over the original.

I find the series interesting mostly because there really aren't that many Japanese takes on Star Trek, and it's really interesting to see that.

You know what else I find interesting about SO 3 and 4? They both contain examples of good visual only storytelling in the opening cutscenes. Star Ocean 3 has the advance of technology then we get to see Earth in the future, and Star Ocean 4 (in the pre-menu version without voice-over) has the nuclear war and the development of the warp technology. But the storytelling in the rest of both games takes an enormous tumble.

...actually, that pops up weirdly often with Tri-Ace games. Most of them have at least one moment where the storytelling takes a giant step forward, but they can't maintain it.

Quote from: Yggdrasil on February 15, 2015, 09:10:31 AM

Real talk. Does anybody genuinely gets bothered by avatars and/or silent protagonist in RPGs nowdays? I always saw that kind complaint as shallow given the nature of the genre.

It depends on implementation. It tends to work fine for me in JRPGs when it comes up, but when a WRPG tries to do it I just can't develop a connection with the game.

I think the big difference is that JRPG silent protagonists tend to have some level of personality, and there are usually other characters to take up the slack. WRPGs are more likely to give the player character a personality completely defined by the player, and NPCs tend to talk directly to you, and have whole conversations, which makes the silent protagonist thing stand out a lot more.

(actually, was there ever a Tales of character that was explicitly confirmed to not be a virgin?)
(Future Ludger doesn't count)

Anyone who turned down talking to the Unicorn in the Aselia games.

Oh, and Will from Legendia and Stahn and Rutee in the Destiny games. They all have kids.

I got this game too. Yeah, it's really good. I've tried the SNES version and it was just horribly confusing, but this is a million times better. Although sometimes I sidestep into a pit instead of turn, since the control scheme takes a little getting used to.

the 64 gig isn't even commercially available in North America. You have to import it.

The 32 gig card is $80 in Canada, and a 32 gig micro sd card, which is significantly smaller than the PS vita cards, cost between 25 and 40 dollars. The reason people complain is because there's literally no reason for the cards to be so expensive beyond branding.

It would also be less of an issue if you could save downloaded Vita games separately from the game file itself because, seriously, you either need PS+ to maintain a save after you delete a game off your Vita, or you need to back it up on your PC. Why would you design your save system like that? It's clearly not mandatory since cartridge games save onto the Vita itself, instead of onto the cartridge.