Jump to content

Nyakuza Metro - N4A Chat Thread - June 2019


April

Recommended Posts

On 6/7/2019 at 11:09 AM, DranSeasona said:

Yeah. Abusing save states in older games is fine, IMO. Usually all you’re doing is skipping over the pointless trekking back to the part you’re struggling with. The part that always bugged me was that wasted time. I still feel like I accomplish something when I finally conquer that cheap jump or what have you.

 

Old games are designed to be cheap on purpose to artificially extend your play time, as they had more limited resources to build games back then so could not make them naturally long. Games are generally easier now because they can get away with that while still making a satisfyingly lengthy experience.

 

Old school difficulty is frankly based on antiquated game design, and in my opinion shouldn’t be held up so often as the model for good games.

 

On 6/7/2019 at 11:12 AM, EH_STEVE said:

Yeah I'm playing through StarTropics and dying and going back to a checkpoint with no health or items you collected is an absolute pain. So I Save State every few screens.

There are some things that are mad dirty in old games that I wouldn't feel bad saving for, but playing a game designed around being hard to beat with no actual risk or care just seems pointless. It's not as though NES games have good story or some other less-interactive reason for playing through them. If you aren't overcoming the obstacles, what's the point? Sparing yourself a 10 minute grind, sure. Saving every other moment so that you never have to re-do or improve at anything makes me wonder why you're bothering at all.

 

The antiquated design isn't in the concept of a game that's short but difficult to learn and conquer. Those still come out regularly. The antiquated bits are the obtuse solutions, parts that clearly weren't meant to be hard or are challenging in an unrewarding way, and other things that disappeared once game design theory was a bit more established.

@Tyranogre was talking about save-stating old-style Castlevanias and that just baffles me because the whole point of those games is to carefully overcome something that's designed to punish you for pushing forward without thought. But by eliminating any risk, you're free to bash your head against it without really figuring anything out or improving. I know that's basically quoting the meme, but it's all these games really have outside of good music. It's like playing a bullet hell with infinite lives or god-mode. Why not pick a game with more to offer at that point?
 

Edited by Pichi
Link to comment
1 hour ago, Doc Brown said:

What about times when people are busy and have to use save states? Shouldn't situations like that be an exception?

My point isn't that savestates are bad or whatever. If you have more fun bringing the difficulty down, that's totally valid. But NES games like these are one-dimensional, and if you don't have time to spend on tackling that progress at least somewhat naturally, I don't know why you'd even want to play them.

They don't have much else to offer generally.

Edited by Pichi
Link to comment

Zelda II's Death Mountain/Path to the Final Palace is a legitimate place for savestates.

 

Thoughts on Tales series mentioned prior from the games I played:

Spoiler

Phantasia: A game I've come to appreciate more over time. Incredible themes for a game it's age. It started as a novel originally, and I think it shows with its story-telling. Characters are interesting, plot is fantastic, and soundtrack is killer. Problem comes in gameplay: the main dungeons are awful with its puzzles, and the random encounter makes it worse. Use Holy Bottles liberally. You also play as the meat shield for the entire game. Play the Playstation remake for this one.

 

Symphonia: Pure nostalgia for me. I love this game despite that it has corn growing out of its ears. But I think it manages to subvert some tropes and provides for a interesting ride with some plot twists some genuinely may not see coming. The game also has an affinity system similar to Final Fantasy VII, which opens the gates for Newgame+. This is a hard game to play by modern standards unless you have a soft spot for mid-00's JRPGs.

 

Abyss: I like this one a lot, too. Hearing "Karma" from Bump of Chicken never fails to get me pumped. I know people despise Luke, but I think there's convincing reason for his behaviour for the first act. I think it's cast is great in their personality, actions, flaws, and resolves. The only character I can call a dud is Natalia. The gameplay is significantly improved from Symphonia with free-run, but abilities offer much better character growth than whatever the ex-sphere system was trying to do. Avoid the PS2 version if you can, 3DS version may be 30FPS, but it's load times are a godsend in comparison. And I feel it benefits from a portable format.

 

Dawn of the New World: Only worth playing if you: have a soft-sport for Symphonia, like monster-based JRPGs, have a friend who wants to play and some alcohol.

 

Graces F: The combat is great in this one. I remember micro-managing the Title system a lot, almost after every battle. The story is... not great. The characters aren't the best, either. It's the most "With the Power of Friendship" of Tales games.

 

Xillia: Let's start with the positives: a combat system that improves on the system built on from Symphonia>Abyss>Vesperia. Another nice aspect is it has a sphere-grid like system for developing your characters, allowing for some customization. The problems: The story is acceptable for the first 15 hours, then it falls apart to the point of hilarity. Some main characters have actually no reason to tag along for the journey (mainly Leia.) I'm told there's more exposition to be found in the sidequests, but the game never directs your attentions to sidequests. Meaning without a guide, you would have to backtrack to every town after every event in hopes of finding a quest.

 

Link to comment

I only wish I had more time to maintain those kinds of third-party mods, but between real-life demands and other related site maintenance, I can be stretched quite thin. 💔

 

There are site upgrades that are critical and cannot be ignored, sadly. They do have to take precedence over the third-party modifications.

Link to comment
14 minutes ago, Kodiack said:

I only wish I had more time to maintain those kinds of third-party mods, but between real-life demands and other related site maintenance, I can be stretched quite thin. 💔

 

There are site upgrades that are critical and cannot be ignored, sadly. They do have to take precedence over the third-party modifications.

 

In all seriousness Kodiack, do what you need to do. Red is nice, but I wouldn't want red if it means making your already busy life harder. You already do so much for the site, and it wouldn't be fair for us to ask you to keep colors if these site upgrades need to happen. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's completely fine, and we all understand : ]

Edited by Ares
Link to comment

Thank you! I'm quite excited for the upgrade since it will ultimately make my life much easier, and the site will be even more maintainable going into the future. Plus, the upgrades going in should make the site 10-20%+ faster as well!

 

Fixing username colours is next on my list of Ninfora-related tasks to do. But I also have a lot more on my plate with the servers that I've procured recently enough. This has been an exciting and demanding year, to say the least.

 

Link to comment
12 hours ago, Tyranogre said:

Will anything else be lost?

 

Is it going to be like that rollback that happened a few years ago where everything posted past a certain date just disappears?

No, nothing will be lost.

Link to comment
4 hours ago, Pichi said:

My point isn't that savestates are bad or whatever. If you have more fun bringing the difficulty down, that's totally valid. But NES games like these are one-dimensional, and if you don't have time to spend on tackling that progress at least somewhat naturally, I don't know why you'd even want to play them.

They don't have much else to offer generally.

Fair enough. I don't view it as bringing the difficulty down, so as much as coming back to something when I'm able to. I still view it as natural for what it's worth. Just with real life thrown in.

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

Fair enough. I don't view it as bringing the difficulty down, so as much as coming back to something when I'm able to. I still view it as natural for what it's worth. Just with real life thrown in.

oh well yeah if you meant just as a pause function then ofc that doesn't impact anything

Edited by Pichi
Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...