Re: Game Talk (I'm putting this extra little bit here because the original title was too short)

[Haar_Dragon]

Yeah, please don't.

Also, finished Disgaea 2 this morning, with the Good Ending (since, y'know, I kinda planned to get that ending.) I can't decide whether to play Disgaea 3 or Final Fantasy IX next, though. And I also started playing the Prinny spinoff. The controls are a little bit off--as in, you have no control over your movement in midair and your momentum dies as soon as you fall--but it's fun. Hard, but fun. But that's probably just because I suck at platforming.

[NebulaGregarZX]

Hmm... tough choice. FFIX is one of my absolute favorites. Pick it if you're in the mood for some classic FF action, and perhaps a little tired of constant Disgaea. But remember, the game is FOUR DISKS LONG. Admittedly, the fourth disk is pretty much the last set of AMVs, the final dungeons, the final battle and ending, that stuff. A bit like FFVIII in that respect, but not compressed to the point of excluding all the towns in the game. Just some of them.

Oh, no, the game's actually that hard. Haven't you heard? NIS BRAGS about their games being painful. Like the advertisement for Zettai Hero Project, wherein you forcefully Transmigrate your main character every time you leave a dungeon, and it's a Roguelike? "The most soul-crushing grindfest EVER!" ...But I LIKE Z.H.P., really. I just wish I could find a copy. I hear that the title's format is tricky, as you have to enter "Z.H.P.", not "Zettai Hero Project" or "ZHP", or it won't show up in the search results. But it's honestly pretty neat, and includes Patrick Seitz and Karen Strassmen's voice acting. And the option to switch to Japanese voices, as usual.

Speaking of which, Edgar, you'll be disappointed to know that they changed Adell's English VA in D2. And normally I'd say to suck it up, it's not that bad, but, uh... it IS that bad. Like, what-the-hell-were-they-thinking kind of bad. Once you get him in the postgame, switch to the Japanese voices and save yourself the agony...

[Zeldaman2.0]

Oh, Haar, since you beat it do you mind if I link you to the Worst Ending?

And that's delightful, I'm glad they decided to replace a perfectly good VA when even freakin' HANAKO is still getting work... God dammit.

[NebulaGregarZX]

Oh, make sure to link both the Japanese and USA versions of it to him if you do.

Personally, I'd be fine with it if the new guy didn't suck so much. But he does, so I'm not, so f*ck NIS America for doing that to us.

[Haar_Dragon]

Sure, go for it. I can't say I'd ever have the patience to

Spoiler:

I don't mind soulcrushing difficulty. I play Ninja Gaiden. I'm terrible at it (or it's poorly designed in places, but most likely I'm just terrible at it), but I still enjoy it. Despite having been stuck in stage...3-4, I think? for about a year now. But yeah, I'm perfectly fine with hard games, and I'm enjoying Prinny.

But that's the thing, I'm not sure I have the patience to sit through four discs of content. And after seeing that ending (and finding a better grinding spot), I'm kinda not really sick of Disgaea. At the same time, nothing I've heard about FFIX points me away from it, and I feel like I'd really enjoy it. This is my conflict...I actually think I'm gonna go for Disgaea 3, since you said it's only 8 chapters long. After which point, I'll hit a roadblock because I don't own Disgaea 4, and I'll have no reason not to play Final Fantasy IX. Except for my wealth of portable games, but I tend to play those during the two hours I have in between classes.

Why would they change Adell's voice actor? I mean...sure, he wasn't really anything special, but then again, he wasn't really bad...like, at all. I could give a few quotes where I thought his delivery was really good. I see no reason to change, at all...

[NebulaGregarZX]

Oh, not enough patience? Well... then I guess you should either ignore the Chocobo Treasure Hunting sidequest, or just make sure to use a guide. Because that's such a long one, spanning the whole game, that I must've spent 20 in-game hours at least on just that. But it gives you really great stuff.

Yeah, that's a good idea. At some point, you should get Disgaea 4, though, it's good.

I dunno why they changed it. Maybe the original died, or retired, or his voice changed, or they lost contact with him, maybe he changed studios, or he asked for more pay than they were willing to give him.

Oh, fun fact: a lot of the jokes in Disgaea 2 were made up by the localization. Etna's whole "Beauty Queen" thing was made up, Yukimaru's vocal tic probably was, too, and I imagine much more of it was, too. Which is strange, since I can't imagine why they would make the second game less funny and sarcastic than the first in Japan. Sure, Adell's goal is noble, and he's human, not a demon. <_< >_> Don't look at me like that. But my point stands.

[Haar_Dragon]

I'd say she had some kind of verbal tic. Kinda like how the Prinnies' thing is to end sentences in "-ssu" or "-suka." Then again, the generic Ninja and Kunoichi don't say "zam" at all. I dunno, maybe.

I never intended not to get Disgaea 4. I've seen it in a good few different places, but I didn't want to get any of the games before I'd played at least some of the first one. Which was hard, considering I couldn't find it anywhere until a couple of months ago. Probably because GameStop hasn't sold PS2 games in years. I consider myself lucky to have found the PSP remake. Even if that is a more recent version.

I don't like using guides, though...and I tend to ignore most sidequests on a first run until I actually need the rewards. Well...not really ignore so much as "look out for and not see because I'm not really focused on it." But same thing, really. I know in other Final Fantasy games, and the Tales of games, and most RPGs actually, I play most of the game, do a bunch of sidequests for the stuff, and then go for the final boss.

...I can't say that, I've only beaten one Tales game. Those games are freakin' long...it makes me sad that I always get distracted by other games, though, because they're really good...Still, my point stands for the majority of RPGs.

[Zeldaman2.0]

Okay, so MASSIVE spoilers inbound.

Spoiler:

And you don't have to be level 2000 for any of the Dark Assembly Bill Bosses, unless you plan on killing Baal. And the absolute highest boss that requires you to be an obscene level to kill is somewhere between 1200 and 1500. And is prone to letting you buff your characters for ten turns.

[NebulaGregarZX]

Er, actually, Edgar...

Spoiler:

[Haar_Dragon]

Okay, I know about that. More specifically, I read about the bit that was removed from the English version. It's actually rather disgusting. And we were given no indication as to a reason for it being there. Does he need to? Is he just sadistic? We hadn't seen that indicated previously, so it comes off to me as needless. Also...were they still alive? If so, that's really quite disturbing.

[NebulaGregarZX]

Spoiler:

...I gave up on trying to avoid spoilers in the above paragraph.

On another note, beat Hour of Darkness last night. Started a second cycle, Transmigrated everybody, including my Angel into an Avenger, the penultimate form of an Angel. The ultimate being Paladin. Also, renamed her from Alcor to Aleri, just for the hell of it. Because they're both Avengers by title. And for some reason, the name Alcor just didn't gel with her.

I deleted all of my leftover, useless characters from before I figured out Transmigration, except for a female Warrior named Leona. I decided to make her just as kickass as my male Cosmic Hero, and maybe I'll set about unlocking every class in the game at some point. It sounds like fun, actually.

About the other Disgaea games... I find the change in sound effects disconcerting. I'm really attached to the first game's set. I like the way they changed certain things, but ultimately, I think Hour of Darkness will forever remain my favorite. Jury's still out on D2, since I lament the lack of spirit in much of the voice acting. Still, I reserve final judgment for after I've played them all. Which means I need to find Cursed Memories or Dark Hero Days, then get my hands on a PS3...

[Haar_Dragon]

I'd point out that Disgaea 3 and 4 have remakes on Vita...but it would be entirely pointless, given that Disgaea D2 is PS3. So pointless sentence is pointless.

Turning into? There was no development on that point, we saw the character twice...for about two minutes each time.

...I had one more thing I wanted to say, but now I can't remember it!!! So I'll comment on something entirely different...no, I can't think of anything. Crap.

Random note, am I the only one who gives the Prinnies really common human names? Like, Bob, Bill, Mike, just names you're bound to come across if you so much as go to school.

[NebulaGregarZX]

Oh? I recall it being mentioned somewhere that said character was turning into an abomination of some sort by reaching the upper limit of demonic power. And being a 'being of solitude' probably makes it hard to counteract.

Yeah, PS3 all the way. I'm missing out on Persona 4 Golden, but in exchange, there's 1.5 ReMIX, 2.5 ReMIX, Disgaea 3, 4, and D2, the Tales of Symphonia Collection... That's just a few incredibly awesome things I could get on PS3. On the Vita? Sure, the remakes of Disgaea 3 and 4, and P4G... but what else? Name one other game I would consider for that system.

Prinnies? I don't even use 'em. Though I'm considering making one now, since I've decided to train up my female Warrior. Might as well. I was going to name him Rousseau, though.  I don't use normal names for my characters, for the most part. While I do borrow most of the names (Shiki, Io, Hygleg, Leona, Joran, Aiden, Kuroyuki, Marta, Alcor, Albireo, Vaan, Cid, Vincent, Cecil... you get the picture.) I do come up with some on my own - though some are borrowed from my own characters, like Aleri and Rekoka - and they're never quite normal. Alberi, for one, being Italian for "tree". Though I suppose that doesn't count. ...Come to think of it, did I ever make up a name from nothing for a Disgaea character? ...I don't think so.

[Haar_Dragon]

Technically "alberi" is "trees," not "tree," but that's just nitpicking.

Well, there's...Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, assuming you don't have a 3DS. And a couple of others worth consideration, but not really any big-name stuff. Mostly remakes of stuff.

I have only ever seriously used one Prinny. His name was Paul. And even then, that was like, I added him at endgame because I needed an extra unit, and he proved to be fairly resilient. Beyond that, I really don't care for them. But the first game gives you three free Prinnies, so I give them common names to go along with their common-grunt nature.

[NebulaGregarZX]

...You're talking about the first game, right? It sounded for a second like you were talking about the second one, too.

Weird, I seem to remember you bragging about your Prinny God...

Oh, and now I know a bit more about how Thieves work. And how I can steal Testaments from Prinny Land 3. So... that's going to happen. I'll just grind my extra Bushi up a bit and Transmigrate her into a Thief to give it a method of getting experience, maybe find a good number of Statisticians to increase EXP gain...

[Zeldaman2.0]

You know, speaking of stealing awesome end-game equipment, APPARENTLY Ordeal 5 in the CoO in Disgaea 2 has an enemy that has ARCADIAS. I dunno if that's a /constant/ item, but the fact that something is comparable to FREE final-tier armor, with all-around stat utility can be potentially /farmed/? Why did I not use this sooner?!

...oh yeah. The guy is level 1000. Well sh*t. XD

[NebulaGregarZX]

I'm curious, just how high to enemy levels and stats go in the first two games? I know later ones make hellish stages with level 9999 enemies and absurd setups, but for some reason, I get the feeling Level 9999 isn't necessary in the first two games for anything. Which is good, because I don't feel like spending QUITE that much time grinding. And I'm pretty sure the Bonus Boss of the first game is level 4000, as I recall Laharl complaining about it in a snatch of cutscene I caught.

[Haar_Dragon]

Was I bragging about him? Huh. It was probably more that I had actually unlocked that tier and gotten my Prinny to enough Mana just to GET him. Either way, he's a good teammate, and as much as I hate to say it, he's kinda better than Kurtis. Kurtis wasn't really that great. Even though he's awesome.

I dunno, I never really did the bonus stuff, but apparently the highest level recruitable character is fought at level 3200, and I believe that applies to both games. Though I believe Item Gods are Level 9999, but I could be wrong. Again, never did that.

[Zeldaman2.0]

The IW is where most of the highest-level enemies are at, but you WILL need 9999 for Uber Prinny Baal. I dunno about Item Gods (never got that far myself) but I think once you get the LoC unlocked 9999 becomes fairly easy.

[Cremator of the Sky]

And, yes, Crem, I am talking about KI. I've heard nothing but fantastic things about it,  and it looks exactly like a game I'd have a blast playing.

First off, allow me to apologize about just leaving you hanging like that. I have a lot going on right now.

Secondly, I find that hard to believe. Very, very, hard to believe. Since I had zero interest in KI and never bothered looking at it I decided to do some looking around its wiki and watch a video or two. And all I can say is that's its basically Darkstalkers made by the people who made Injustice without any of the charm or quirks of the former and the lifelessness of the latter. Also before you try to correct me by saying its Double Helix who made KI and they didn't make Injustice, don't bother I'm fully aware and I just wanted to make a proper comparison. And on that note... Did Double Helix even TRY?

I can't comment on the gameplay too much, everything looked fine, nothing bad but nothing spectacular, to me except for one thing. Instead of a new round beginning when a character's health depletes, the fight keeps going, the loser gets a new life bar, and the previous winner maintains their health bar. Lifted directly from Darkstalkers and just as completely unbalanced and unlikable there as it is here. It's basically set up so that the person who gets the first "win" is going to have an advantage over their opponent. If you can't comprehend why this is terrible, then please don't say anything. But if I must elaborate, by all means please ask and I shall, to only make points and not back them up is just petty.

So with my view on the gameplay aside, I decided to take a look at the other most important aspect of a fighter, its characters. First off, it already hit a previous pet peeve of mine by only having eight playable characters. Oh wait, I'm sorry it's only eight as of now because it was SIX at its release. Just... what the HELL Double Helix? You're an actual company with revenue making a reboot to an old fighter that had two games before with a reasonable roster size from the looks of it. If you can't get eight characters at the minimum ready for the release date, just delay it.

That aside, I can't say much for the actual cast themselves. I've seen practically most of them in other (read as: better) fighters. Sabrewulf is basically an inferior version of Darkstalkers' Jon Tolbain (I don't care who you are, a Werewolf with Nunchucks is better than any other werewolf without them), Glacius is basically an ice version of Pyron (again from DS, I'm noticing a trend here) except not a galactic conqueror, Spinal is a bare-bones (pun intended) Cervantes (from Soul Calibur), and then Shadow Jago is basically an evil recolor of Jago with very little variation between them. I know Capcom does this, but at least they try to make their clone characters some variations amongst them.

The only character that honestly caught my interest was Folgore, but just barely. The only thing I can give KI props for is the character customization. It's always nice to see it in a fighter and I really hope it catches on. Even if its just something as minor as making your own color palettes, I'd still love it.

[Zeldaman2.0]

So far SG is the only one worth talking about. And everyone should give Skullgirls a try. The game is very entertaining and while the roster is quite small (I don't care what anyone says, it's the seventh(when it first came out)/eighth console generation people, we shouldn't be having such small casts for a brand new fighter) it's slowly being expanded upon which just goes to show how much the devs care.

Literally everything you said is negated by this. Small roster being expanded upon in both, both make obvious references to other fighters, both are made by RENOWNED companies, and that health function? Present in both. Please, tell me why KI is bad again and SG is "the only one worth talking about"? And the roster is small in both, I dunno about KI but I know it's the case in SG, because BALANCE is a thing. Don't like balance? Please, play Smash and Street Fighter and MvC.

[Haar_Dragon]

Smash Bros isn't THAT unbalanced. You might be forgetting that Brawl is not the entire series, because that game doesn't have hardly any balance at all.

[Cremator of the Sky]

Literally everything you said is negated by this. Small roster being expanded upon in both, both make obvious references to other fighters, both are made by RENOWNED companies, and that health function? Present in both. Please, tell me why KI is bad again and SG is "the only one worth talking about"? And the roster is small in both, I dunno about KI but I know it's the case in SG, because BALANCE is a thing. Don't like balance? Please, play Smash and Street Fighter and MvC.

No, it's not. Also, you might want to do more research. Skullgirls was developed by Reverge Labs, all Konami did was co-publish it with Autumn Games. Saying Konami made Skullgirls is like saying Atlus made the first Disgaea.

Obvious references is a bit much, but I guess to KI's credit it existed a while ago so I can let a couple things slide.

The only time that health function is used in Skullgirls is in regards to Team Battles. There are no team battles in KI, its just 1v1 with the same two characters. Ergo, my claim is still valid.

And let me get this straight... you think roster size determines a game's balance?

https://youtu.be/yfKV5R4rovE

Please, no, get out of this. A game is capable of having a relatively large roster while still maintaining a great deal of balance. It all depends on how much time the devs put into working on the characters themselves to achieve balance. You will not find this in most of Capcom's work these days. You WILL find it however in Guilty Gear and Blazblue to name two examples.

On the subject of small character rosters, SG gets the pass because again, lack of resources and small studio. KI has no excuse because Double Helix, is the opposite story. They took a previously established series and instead of trying to rework and revamp as much as possible, they decided to just go with the bare minimum of six characters and slowly release new characters that you have to buy.

Oh yeah, I should probably mention that as well. Apparently Double Helix couldn't bother releasing a game with a whole roster, so they're selling the initial six characters separately or in a pack while the two new characters are being sold separately and with the news of some other characters on the way they will also probably be sold in a pack. They claim its for a financial strategy, but I'm not believing or having any of it. You're basically buying a half-finished game and to finish it you have to keep buying characters released over time.

Now while that's a whole debate in regards to DLC, the point is instead of just waiting to make an adequately sized roster, they went with a minimal roster and decided to make you keep buying stuff after you bought the game.

[Haar_Dragon]

I'm just gonna put in a couple of general things, since in terms of specifics, I wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Personally, I don't think "oh, it's a small company" is a good reason to give something a pass. Because the fact remains that a problem is still a problem. If Sega was a small company, would Sonic Heroes get a pass? Hell no! It still has bad controls and doesn't play well in general, and any and all difficulty comes from BS reasons. That said, I don't think small roster size is a problem. Super Smash Bros. 64 had 12 characters, including 4 that had to be unlocked. But that's beside the point. The point being, regardless of company size, bad is still bad.

That said, what IS a problem is this DLC nonsense. While it is technically a "financial strategy," it's a stupid one. As was previously stated, it's essentially releasing a half-finished game, forcing the consumer to continually pay more for more product. It's different for costumes or other non-canon things, but for non-cameo player characters in a fighting game? I believe the proper word is "inexcusable." It's like if we were playing Kingdom Hearts 2 and we had to purchase The World That Never Was separately, or if in Zelda you just got the Master Sword whenever you decided to pay for it. It's nonsense. Again, the only reason to excuse it is for either non-canon extra stuff or just something that doesn't impact the overall story in general. And considering fighting games, where story doesn't really matter and is specific to each character, it's really not possible to not impact the main story.

Again, trying to stay general, because I don't know much specifics, but...tl;dr, bad is bad, DLC is 65% bull. And yes, I did just pull that statistic out of my ass.

[Zeldaman2.0]

Smash Bros isn't THAT unbalanced. You might be forgetting that Brawl is not the entire series, because that game doesn't have hardly any balance at all.

No, but characters like Game and Watch and Pichu have /very/ little advantage over the likes of Fox, Marth and even Mario. G&W has versatility, yeah, but Pichu literally hurts himself every time he uses an Electic move, which are /very/ useful for hitstun, and is an even lighter version of Pikachu. Granted, yes, two examples, but my point is if you can keep up with Fox's speed he almost always becomes a force to be reckoned with.

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