Falcom General - Cozy JRPG pioneers with rockin' music.

Megaroad

Space Adventure
kiwifarms.net
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Oct 30, 2018
Falcom thread? Falcom thread.

Favorite game? Favorite waifu? Favorite soundtrack?

I managed to get the original Sorcerian running again not too long ago and have been catching up on the recent titles likes Ys VIII and Tokyo Xanadu.
 
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Popful Mail. Mail. Popful Mail.

Popful Mail on the Sega CD and YS 1-4 on the TG16 are great examples of early multimedia CD gaming done right and can still be enjoyed today. YS 1 &2 on the TG16 will be the definitifive version of the game for me and Popful mail is still great even with the Working Design's adjustments.
 
I've only really played YS 3 all the way through. I remember setting my controller to autofire in the mines and leaving the game overnight to gain all the exp. Good times.
 
Necro-ing the thread because I just finished Tokyo Xanadu and I don't think I ever had such a bad experience from a Falcom game and I need to unload the vitriol and here it's somewhat relevent.

Tokyo Xanadu can be best described as a game adaption of an extremely shitty Light Novel having an unholy spawn with Persona, but unlike usual crappy LNs it's with zero edge and even worse writing. I'll start with the combat system because it's the least bad part about the game. It's a boring cookie cutter ARPG with customization options that only really change the gameplay in the latter part. I played it on hard and it was more difficult in the early parts with the later parts being more of a slog with very high enemy HP and no real risk. All of the characters are nearly identical (with the exception of one character than can create shields) and there is only a single sane build for any of the characters. The most bizarre thing about the combat is that there are three "special" type of attacks, all three charge from the same things and only exist to be unloaded on bosses when they reach half health, which raises the question why not having a single special attack instead of three.

Now for the plot where the game really shits the bed. As I said before, the game is like a shitty LN. The hero is Chad Thundercock, the most boring emo hero imaginable that all the girls cream their pants on, has a genius legal loli cousin, has an obligatory childhood girlfriend, has a dark and troubled past, has a grandpa that is the strongest person in the world, and can kick ass despite not training in several years. It's blindingly obvious he is a Gary Stu. But then every party member is a sue, every one of them is insanely capable and/or connected to extremely powerful people. This makes for an extremely boring party that is just not interesting because they aren't real people, just perfect demi-gods that fit a cookie cutter anime trope list and exist to suck the hero's cock. Contast that with Persona games that allows the party characters have faults and be fuck ups. On a tangent, that's also the reason I can't like Trails of Cold steel series (at least the first two games I played) the characters are all too perfect and capable with the leading character being the worse (though at least the ending of the second game salvaged that a little).

The plot itself is a monster of the week, where there are Madoka-esque parallel dimensions that suck people up and the heroes go to save them. The conflicts in the chapters are saturday cartoon levels of maturity and the heroes have no real place to grow and mature (if anything the opposite, but I'll get to that). The game backstory talks about cookie cutter secret organizations that want to deal with the parallel dimensions but not only nothing ever happens in that regard, there is a character that does what his organization is supposed to do and is treated as a villain for it. The final chapters has the regular japanese swooning on how the JSDF are awesome (before letting the children do the fighting, in one of the worst written moment I've seen in a JRPG). The final chapter has an extremely obvious twist that never actually comes into effect in the plot despite being a massive deal that could easiely be incorporated. In general, the last chapter feels like the writers wanted to do the Dark Sakura plot from Fate and didn't understand its point at all.

Then there's the "true" ending and oh boy it's bad. If the normal ending was decent and at least had an imaginary character growth for the hero, the true ending shits all that by letting the hero have his cake and eat it. Because there can be no negative consequences when it inconveniences Chad Thundercock and his harem, literal god fixes the plot because reasons.

Finally other points I want to criticize. First, why does Falcom constantly do panning shots? It's in every scene in their game and it's boring as hell. By the end I just hold the fast forward option just to skip the literal hours of panning. Second, Falcom loves the trope of having side characters helping the heroes in the climax, but it just raises the question of why nobodies are able to fight eldtrich horrors and why the super badasses don't just solve the problem on their own if they are so powerful they can one shot bosses. In Tokyo Xanadu the amount of side characters in the climax is near parody level. Finally, Falcom has a weird morality where everyone can be redeemed. It's not necessarily wrong but some people should be in jail after nearly killing others either purposely or not. Of course nothing comes close to a character in Trails of Cold Steel that causes a civil war that likely killed at least tens of thousands of people, only for him to be accepted as a good person despite his reasoning being that people were mean to his grandpa.

tl;dr Tokyo Xanadu is bad.
 
Big bump, but I didn't want to make a new thread just to talk about Falcom games. I've been on a bit of a Falcom kick recently, I'm just about at the end of Ys Origins, this shit is really hard even on normal. The only other one I've beaten is Ys: Memories of Celceta so I don't have much of a frame of reference, but that was a bit more balanced.

I'm probably going to play Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure next. If there's difficulty modes should I go for easy this time, or is this as easy as it looks and normal is fine?
 
Playing Popful Mail on the SEGA CD for the first time.
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10 out of fucking 10.

also the decision to not localize it for the SEGA Genesis Mini 2 suddenly (sadly) makes sense now.
 
I'm a gigantic Trails fanboy, but I've honestly dabbled nothing on the other Falcom things. Still have Ys 9 looking at me in the wishlist asking when I'll actually give that a go.
 
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Ys Origin still the best Ys
It's pretty good. I liked it more than I do Ys 8 so far. Ys 8 is better in every single way except what matters most; the gameplay. It has a much better sense of adventures and better music/art/etc, but the combat just doesn't feel great and I'm not sure where to go, which wasn't as much of a problem in Origins.

I think I just like a fixed camera more honestly. That's probably my one biggest gripe with Ys 8, the floaty combat that lacks impact and the navigational issues are secondary to wrestling with the camera and finicky lock-in system.

I'm bitching about it, but Ys 8 is still amazing lol
 
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May I recommend you guys to try out Zwei: Ilvard Insurrection or just Zwei II.
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You don't even have to play the first game to understand it since this is just a different story. But what you should know is that it's criminally underrated and I haven't been able to find much about this game since it's one of those japan only games that haven't gotten a translation and western import until years later.
The game has a cool mechanic where healing items count as XP (same as the first game).
I know there's a japanese voice pack if you're a total weeb but I think the English cast did alright so did the translation until I saw the word cringe appear in a game that was made in 2008
I had also managed to track down the soundtrack and unfortunately I could not find a phyiscal CD of it.
But if any Kiwi is looking for a game to play for their New Years resolution you should atleast try this.

And Alwen is the best girl
 
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I could never really get into the Ys or Xanadu games but Faxanadu is one of my favourite nes games of all time. I played the hell out of that game as a kid. I loved everything about it. The graphics and music, the weird atmosphere, the semi-Norse mythology basis. I never beat the game until I became an adult though. Faxanadu is probably the reason I love side scrolling action adventure games to this day.
 
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Completely forgot to update this thread with the fact that I completed Popful Mail. Game was pretty gud. Voice acting was honestly damn good for the time period it was released in, it is fucking hilarious when it can be, and it's overall just a rollicking-good time. 8/10, would gather the Orbs again.
 
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Apparently Nordics is garnering criticism.
'Its bland, uninspired environments, boring two person team, graphics downgrade (which.......uhh.....lol?), sailing sucks, etc'

But from what I've seen there's tons of islands and quite a few towns and bases.
 
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