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| (Spoilers) A Theory Regarding the State of the Game | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 18 2010, 04:18 PM (701 Views) | |
| Effex | Dec 18 2010, 04:18 PM Post #1 |
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The King in Tartan
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Though this has probably already been speculated on, I'm feeling the game was rushed out a little unfinished. While not a severe example, I'm pretty sure there was an appreciable amount of cut content. Things supporting this theory: * The sheer amount of permanently missables. I mean really, there's little reason why that should be the case, especially since you could backtrack everywhere in the first two games. While it may have done to highlight the now bizarre structure of the world, it's really not a good idea from a gameplay perspective. Another possible idea is that they may have done it to enforce some difficulty as a balancing hackjob, but I'll get to that. * The pathetic difficulty curve. You can breeze through almost the entire game without dying. The first two games were easy, but there were a few bosses that could at least give you trouble (Kraken and Poseidon come to mind). Like I said earlier, the vast amount of missable content may have been included to incite some difficulty to the game given its unfinished state. * The huge gap between Amiti and Sveta, and the likewise tiny gap between Sveta, Eoleo, and Himi. This one is really telling. Why is there such a huge gap between the characters? Were they expecting to be some content between Sveta and Eoleo, or Eoleo and Himi? For that matter, why did we get the boat so late? We got the boat about halfway through the game in the Lost Age, why during the final fifth in this one? * Himi in general. She's... just kind of there to open up some roadblocks at the end of the game. She doesn't have much plot significance aside from a bit of teasing regarding a sequel. Moreover, her animations in battle are nearly identical regardless of what she's using. She's just not done. * Crystallux being the only new summon. There's not much supporting this one, but it feels weird, especially since he has a really similar Djinn configuration to Haures, unbalancing the number of summons. (Iris doesn't count, since she's almost literally gotten after you've done everything in the game.) |
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| Amethyst Nighthut | Dec 18 2010, 04:42 PM Post #2 |
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Odds are they were planning to do a sequel to DD here as it is. I mean, just from looking at the story, you've got so many loose threads at the end, not to mention the start of what I feel is the mourning moon... And through out the entire thing I kept getting flashbacks to the first GS game. The level gaps, in my opinion, are more where they would expect or have thought players to be at when they hit those points in the game, though the lack of battles (I could go through entire areas with out seeing a single fight) kind of makes for lower leveled parties. Himi has no excuse for being how she is. Obtained so late in the game that there isn't much in the way story wise to put her in, and most of her animations were used over and over again, but that's not too uncommon. She was a last minute addition when they realized they needed another Venus Adapt to round out the roster. As for the summons, given that we got all of the summons re-done in polygons, some with completely new looks and/or animations, I can forgive them for only adding in one new summon. If they are doing a sequel like I think they are, we should see more new ones since they can focus more on making new animations for those than for the old ones. The rest of the issues I don't really have much to say on. Its not unusual for RPGs to have permanently missable content, regardless of what they did in the past, and the difficulty curve... no clue on that really. |
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| Role | Dec 18 2010, 05:18 PM Post #3 |
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Fulminous Witch
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The questions you ask don't even address some of the major flaws in the game, such as how psynergy is still static in nature, and that only two new characters really have new classes - the other two just have a remix of an older class and a LITERAL clone of a physical class, despite being a mage in build. With that second team, it's like they didn't even try. And why yank out Samurai with Himi, but LEAVE Ninja, which arguably is superior to Samurai? Why not keep the ability to use the Tri-hybrid class, but just redo it like you did with the Brute class? Or hell, give them all new alternate classes based on their role in the party! Personally, I'm sick of this "mages can be tanks" and "physical fighters are worthless" thing with anything but a Venus/Mars are physical Jupiter/Mercury are magical class setup. It's like the started to try and remedy that, starting with Sveta and Himi, but then got lazy, said screw it, and just tacked on all the classes optimized for the other team and called it a day. Like with TLA, and how only two people had new classes, and only for base classes, you could use that same bit of programming to GIVE THEM ALL NEW CLASSES. It was just lazy programming, and a poor choice. |
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| Effex | Dec 18 2010, 05:22 PM Post #4 |
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The King in Tartan
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Those aren't questions, those are mainstays of the series. It's likely they're not going to bother changing those in the next game either. |
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| UltaFlame | Dec 18 2010, 10:49 PM Post #5 |
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Thanks Poui.
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Instead of comparing Dark Dawn to the original two, compare it to Broken Seal. Much more favorable, imo. |
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| Deadbeard | Dec 22 2010, 04:20 AM Post #6 |
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King of Pirates
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The first point of no return is sensible; it stops you from going to see Isaac, and it's clear he's been doing things Camelot don't want us to know about yet. The second one is dumb. I agree with Role about the class thing. Only mars adepts get two fighters so you need to give Eoleo something special. Also give him a Viking class with Mercury Djinn >__> |
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| Role | Dec 23 2010, 05:15 AM Post #7 |
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Fulminous Witch
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No, don't just stop there. The entire second team needs a new class set specifically for them. However, don't stop there, either, fix the damn base classes! Amiti screamed half-assed, and Eoleo's 'condition' was just a slap in the face to his fans. He gets a fighter-like class with what LOOKS like a typical evolving EPA. Come to find out that it's base damage, effectively making the class worthless. The classes, in general, need to be optimized for the team, not just one set that everyone's forced into. And while we're at it, throwing in a way to make psynergy worthwhile in the levels after you learn it would be good, too. Either that, or cut down the XP gains, seriously. Just how fast psynergy became obsolete in this game was a joke. I mean, come on - for something so powerful, why is it that the only psynergy that doesn't suck happens to be the buffs and healing? Now how about the caps: This is just plain insulting. Anyone notice that they raised the max cap for attack to 1999, but kept the others where they were? Seeing Godspeed Ronin Tyrell max out his speed did not make me a happy camper. Seeing Rief do the same just ticked me off, because my strategic turn order just got shot to hell in the process. To be honest, I don't ever want to hit a max cap without buffs, ever. Now Rief either ties for first speed, OR he's dead last. Thanks alot, Camelot. |
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| Chrono Ivan | Dec 23 2010, 12:26 PM Post #8 |
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He who strikes like lightning
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They wrote themselves into a corner and were too far out of beta to fix it. It happens. They wanted 'reason to fix the alchemy machines in El-Jei' with 'this is connected to the overarching plot' and then realized 'oh shit the player can literally backtrack to Isaac and Garet after meeting Blados' now the SMART choice would be to make up excuses for Isaac to leave so they could report to Garet (who is in no way nearly as competent a la 'meet up with Mayor in vale with Ivan and Mia' in GS1) but eh, yeah, this was certainly decided late in development.
I assume they curved the difficulty as though you had no djinn the whole game, which panders to their target demographic (children who aren't gamefaqs reading completionists). That's my only cue. If you get no djinn in GS1 the random encounters actually get tough.
Bad writing, again. Sveta doesn't want to kill the mountain roc because it's sacred but is totally ok with letting you guys do it? Umm? And then she helps you anyways? Hence for no good reason Sveta is kept out of the party until you get to Eclipse tower. Ideally you'd get Eoleo FOR the tower by rescuing him, which I think was their plan, and would probably be IC for Eoleo, but uhh yeah. They really dropped the ball here. I MIGHT hazard that they gave Eoleo thermal after designing the eclipse tower to not use it, but really.
Rushed Development, obviously. Mayhap camelot ran closer to deadlines than it wanted to. ![]()
Since it's in full 3D, from a technical perspective ALL the summons are new, and are using their 2D analogues as inspiration. I would hazard that again, rushed development meant they basically redid every summon and called it a day. You'll note that for all its coolness Crystallux is still derivative in nature from something else. I'm not going to address any of Role's points as they are technical powergaming perspective ones that due to the low difficulty curve and forgiving nature of the psyenery distribution are only of interest to uhh, Role and anyone who wants to make a competitive battle system out of it (these greivances would have some merit if you had link arena battles, but you can't, so they aren't.) As well they are pretty much her personal axe to grind. Not until psyenergy damage is defined by a growth stat, no class title is repeated anywhere on any character and every class has totally unique psyenergy with unique animations will she be satisfied. |
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| b l o n d e b o n d | Dec 23 2010, 03:43 PM Post #9 |
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Wombo Combo
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pretty much all that; stop grinding, role! D: |
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| Deadbeard | Dec 23 2010, 05:27 PM Post #10 |
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King of Pirates
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Just because it isn't necessary to win doesn't mean it wouldn't be awesome. Making character's have individual niches is always a good thing. |
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| Role | Dec 23 2010, 08:19 PM Post #11 |
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Fulminous Witch
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I wasn't! They give you so much experience is freaking hard NOT to overlevel! Wasn't even NEAR as bad in TBS and TLA (and even TLA had issues with it), here it's just ridiculous. I agree with the no-djinn argument on difficulty, though. My inept run is getting TOUGH. I barely made it past the three scouts, I actually Game Overed the first time I fought them. Without being allowed to get djinn, and being restricted to non-artifacts only, it's getting tough. I'm clamoring to get all the spell items like Crystal Powder and what not I can find. I'm right before the sand prince, and just plain don't have the coin to keep equipment up to date, and grinding ain't gonna help much. Not being able to sell my only means of revival REALLY hurts in the long run. So while for the vanilla game, DD is really easy, I'd argue that self-imposed challenge games are GOLD here. |
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