[Event] The PokeCommunity Game-Along

[pkmin3033]

Do FFV fourjobfiesta with Aaron and I :')
Or literally any other FF game. Except IX. Fuck IX.

Fixed it for ya! Wanna be careful with your numbers there. No need to thank me, happy to help you get it right!~

Not gonna lie, I haven't played that many JRPGs and don't have any right now in my backlog. I've played FFVII, FFVIII, Xenoblade Chronicles, few Fire Emblem games, if they count and probably some more that I don't remember right now. So I think I'll ask you all for recommendations. I heard about Ni No Kuni, Tales series and Dragon Quests, but I'm not really sure how good any of them are or where to start with those series. I would be really grateful for any recommendation.

Hmmm...well, what sort of JRPG would you like to play? Turn-based, real-time? Any particular platform you'd feel like?

You definitely can't go wrong with Xenoblade Chronicles, and if you want a Tales game, you'd do well with Xillia, Berseria, or Symphonia...but not Vesperia or Abyss; those are both awful. Dragon Quest is a good traditional experience - even the most recent one - although the grind can be tough going if you don't have the patience for it. Ni No Kuni is...a bit of a trial, if I'm honest, but if you enjoyed Pokemon games, you might get some fun out of it. If nothing else, it's beautifully presented~

 

[gimmepie]

Fixed it for ya! Wanna be careful with your numbers there. No need to thank me, happy to help you get it right!~

Lmao
I haven't experience XI, so I can't judge. I'll take your word for it though :')

 

[pkmin3033]

Lmao
I haven't experience XI, so I can't judge. I'll take your word for it though :')

Wait wait wait

Your post says XII, not XI. Now I'm REALLY confused, haha.

 

[gimmepie]

Wait wait wait

Your post says XII, not XI. Now I'm REALLY confused, haha.

I have XII and I dislike it. I haven't played or even seen anything of XI, but I'll trust your judgement that it's not very good.

 

[pkmin3033]

I have XII and I dislike it. I haven't played or even seen anything of XI, but I'll trust your judgement that it's not very good.

Aaah. In that case, I stand by my correction, because IX is waaaaay worse than XII in my opinion =P

As for XI...that's not one I could or would recommend, because honestly XIV is significantly better. XI has not aged particularly gracefully in my opinion - and I played it...three years ago, I think? So god only knows how it feels now! - and really, if it's an MMO you want, you really would be better off with XIV. It's better in pretty much every way...except for perhaps the narrative, but I have only played XIV's base game (which has a dreadfully dull story, although I hear the expansions are better) so I'm not sure about that. XIV also probably has more players so you'll have a much better social experience, which is a huge part of any MMO.

Honestly though, if it's Final Fantasy you want to play, you shouldn't listen to anyone at all about what to play first. Read the blurb for each game and decide which one is best for you. Final Fantasy games are all quite different in terms of story, cast, and setting - although there are common gameplay elements in many - and your mileage will vary. I expect I'll have Rabi in here in a minute ready to crucify me for badmouthing FFIX again

 

[gimmepie]

Aaah. In that case, I stand by my correction, because IX is waaaaay worse than XII in my opinion =P

As for XI...that's not one I could or would recommend, because honestly XIV is significantly better. XI has not aged particularly gracefully in my opinion - and I played it...three years ago, I think? So god only knows how it feels now! - and really, if it's an MMO you want, you really would be better off with XIV. It's better in pretty much every way...except for perhaps the narrative, but I have only played XIV's base game (which has a dreadfully dull story, although I hear the expansions are better) so I'm not sure about that. XIV also probably has more players so you'll have a much better social experience, which is a huge part of any MMO.

Honestly though, if it's Final Fantasy you want to play, you shouldn't listen to anyone at all about what to play first. Read the blurb for each game and decide which one is best for you. Final Fantasy games are all quite different in terms of story, cast, and setting - although there are common gameplay elements in many - and your mileage will vary. I expect I'll have Rabi in here in a minute ready to crucify me for badmouthing FFIX again

Oh, I misread IX as XI before lmao
IX is great. Shame on you :P

 

[Lunar]

I'm excited to be joining this challenge this month, and just as excited to finally be jumping back into FFXIV after a year out! I just need to get my PS4 fixed and then I'll try to complete Stormblodd (I'm halfway through atm) and then Shadowbringers!

 

[saniachan]

As an impartial moderator, I say yes, it does. As an individual, I say no it doesn't. Listen to the former. Pokemon is fine. xD

Okay~
In that case, I'll go with Pokemon X Idolocke - Arcaea edition. You can put me in the players list with just Pokemon X, though.

Spoiler: The rules I'll be going with

#1) If a Pokemon faints, it is considered kicked off the team and must be either released or permanently boxed (I'll do the latter). This is basically the death rule in regular Nuzlocke.

#2) You may only capture the first female Pokemon you encounter in any new area. I'm keeping this rule from the original Idolocke because most of Arcaea casts are girls. Well, except Chuni Penguin who is a boy and originally from Chunithm.

• Gender Clause: Any male or genderless Pokemon that appear in the wild do not count as encounters.
• Dupes Clause: No duplicate Pokemon or evolutions/pre-evolutions of duplicate Pokemon may be used. I'm not a big fan of encounter limits, so... no limits.
• Gift Clause: Gift Pokemon can be used and you can soft-reset to get a female one.
• Legendary Clause: Legendary Pokemon may be caught and used provided they are female and would legitimately be your first encounter for an area. This means I can't use the must-catch Xerneas even if I want to. 😭
• Shiny Clause: In case of encountering a shiny Pokemon (which is quite rare in itself), it may be caught and added to your team/waiting list immediately. This is the only way I can use male and genderless Pokemon in this run.

#3) After completing any catch or receiving any eligible gift Pokemon (other than your starter and shinies whose audition is solely for deciding the team), the new Pokemon must perform an audition in Arcaea. The audition process goes as follows:

• Pause Pokemon X and open Arcaea.
• Go to "Music Play" and select a song. I'll just randomize it anyway, though.
• Play the song with difficulty level matching the Pokeball used earlier
• At the end of the song, determine the score and completion status. More details for the difficulty level and scoring system below:

Spoiler:

The difficulty level requirements:

• Pokeball and Premier Ball: Past / Easy
• Great Ball and any other balls: Present / Normal
• Ultra and Master Balls: Future / Hard

And for the scoring system:

#4) All Pokemon must have nicknames. In this case, I'll use characters from various rhythm games as my nicknaming theme. Might branch out to something else when I run out of them, though.

#5) Since all of Arcaea's songs are in either "light side" or "conflict side", all Pokemon are split into two teams: Team of Light and Team of Conflict. Your party's maximum capacity is six: three for Team of Light and three for Team of Conflict.

Doubles as a sneak peek of some songs I might play.​

• The team membership is decided by the song played for that particular audition: Team of Light for the "light side" songs (shown by a light blue block below the song's level) and Team of Conflict for the "conflict side" songs (shown by a purple block below the song's level). This is why I'll randomize the songs for auditions.
• You're allowed to shuffle the members around as long as they don't break the formation.
• Pokemon may only battle with other members of their assigned team. This means if you're in a battle and you want to switch to another Pokemon, you may not switch out to anyone who is not in your active Pokemon's team.
• If a Pokemon faints in battle, one of her teammates must switch in and either win the battle or faint alongside her. If you run out of Pokemon in a given team, only then may you switch to a Pokemon in another team.

#6) As long as you still have usable Pokemon in your PC or the daycare, the challenge is not over, even in the event of a white-out.

#7) The challenge rules do not take effect until you receive your first Pokeballs.

 

[Janp]

Do FFV fourjobfiesta with Aaron and I :')
Or literally any other FF game. Except XII. Fuck XII.

Hmmm...well, what sort of JRPG would you like to play? Turn-based, real-time? Any particular platform you'd feel like?

You definitely can't go wrong with Xenoblade Chronicles, and if you want a Tales game, you'd do well with Xillia, Berseria, or Symphonia...but not Vesperia or Abyss; those are both awful. Dragon Quest is a good traditional experience - even the most recent one - although the grind can be tough going if you don't have the patience for it. Ni No Kuni is...a bit of a trial, if I'm honest, but if you enjoyed Pokemon games, you might get some fun out of it. If nothing else, it's beautifully presented~

Thank you both for recommendations. I did some research and I think I'll try Tales of Berseria for this month.

 

[pkmin3033]

Thank you both for recommendations. I did some research and I think I'll try Tales of Berseria for this month.

Very very very very VERY good choice. Easily the best Tales title...actually my second favourite game of all time. By a very slim margin. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!


As for me...I am going to play Fire Emblem: Fates. All three of them. It's either that or Shadows of Valentia and I don't think I'm in the right state of mind to deal with that game's abysmal hit rates. Wish me luck....I am not going to enjoy Birthright. xD

 

[gimmepie]

I have now made it to the end of the Water Crystal segment of FFV. I'm enjoying the game so far, but as of yet I'm not finding it as compelling as other FF instalments. That being said, while a lot of the character choices have been predictable and their personalities are rather bland so far - outside of Faris - there's still a lot of the game left for that to be remedied and FF games are often a slow burn for that sort of thing I'm learning. I am very curious as to the overarching plot though, I'm clueless about that one.

As per the rules of FourJobFiesta (for a standard run of the challenge) I'm currently restricted to the Thief and Red Mage jobs. This is... not ideal. It could also have been a lot worse though, at least I have both some fire power and healing now, albeit to a more limited extent for both than if I had speciality mages.

Oh this is cool! Great work <3 (your CSS is fine btw lmao)

I'll go ahead and in light of fourjobfiesta, put FFV down as mine and I'll start getting onto that today hopefully (eek)

Curious to see how your run goes since you're also doing fjf.

 

[Arcaneum]

Curious to see how your run goes since you're also doing fjf.

I just started this evening and I'm at my second job! I've had Monk and Red Mage so far, so thankfully I've got a nice and balanced party. Just currently grinding a bit for optional enemies etc.

 

[gimmepie]

I just started this evening and I'm at my second job! I've had Monk and Red Mage so far, so thankfully I've got a nice and balanced party. Just currently grinding a bit for optional enemies etc.

Seems like a solid combo. I picked up Bard for my third job. So I'll need to find that shard since it's not one of the ones you just get automatically. I'm rather lacking in a particularly heavy hitter since it sounds like Bard is primarily a support class, so I'm hoping when I eventually get to the Earth Crystal it gives me something with some more power to it.

 

[Arcaneum]

So it turns out that Beastmaster and Red Mage between them just break most of the game! Been an absolute breeze so far on FFV, I've managed to get to the Earth Crystal, and therefore Galuf's world now, with basically zero hitches (I say basically because FUCK I FORGOT THAT THE CANNONS DO FIXED DAMAGE SO I WASTED SO MANY ITEMS ON THEM AND IT MADE THE SOUL CANNON HARD), but very much on track to complete this I reckon over the next few days!

Party as it stands: Red Mage, Monk, Beastmaster and Dancer (yes I did manage to get the Ribbon so the Dancer isn't completely useless)

 

[gimmepie]

So it turns out that Beastmaster and Red Mage between them just break most of the game! Been an absolute breeze so far on FFV, I've managed to get to the Earth Crystal, and therefore Galuf's world now, with basically zero hitches (I say basically because FUCK I FORGOT THAT THE CANNONS DO FIXED DAMAGE SO I WASTED SO MANY ITEMS ON THEM AND IT MADE THE SOUL CANNON HARD), but very much on track to complete this I reckon over the next few days!

Party as it stands: Red Mage, Monk, Beastmaster and Dancer (yes I did manage to get the Ribbon so the Dancer isn't completely useless)

Yes. Fuck the Confusing/Sapping cannons. The flamethrowers were fine, but the other two were a nightmare and I'm amazed I didn't have to restart. Granted, I landed and healed at an inn after each wing and again after boss cannon. I ended up with Chemist from the Earth Crystal giving me a final line up of Thief, Red Mage, Bard and Chemist.

 

[pkmin3033]

OK, so now that I'm painfully re-acquainted with just how bad Fire Emblem is I'm changing my mind. I'm going to play Disgaea 1 Complete on the Switch. Which is a version of the game I have not played before! It has also been at least a decade since I last played this game, that is why I am choosing it over Disgaea 4 Complete+...for the moment. Chances are I will cave and pick up D4 instead, because it's the best game in the series in every conceivable way. But hey ho!

Only aiming to finish the main story for this month. I expect I'll still be playing this in September trying to collect all the equipment in the postgame, though.

 

[Cherrim]

I finished the Shadowbringers expansion last night! I still have the patches to go but I'm sure I'll finish them soon enough and they don't count the same way.

I almost had major trouble, too, since my graphics card died last week and it was looking like I'd either have to replace it, replace my whole computer, rebuy the game on ps4 and learn to play it there, or give up and rush through a different jrpg to finish in time. But my dad bought me a new gpu and all was well. ;_;

I enjoyed the story so much and I'm really excited to be caught up in FFXIV for the very first time soon! Just in time for the new patch, lol.

 

[gimmepie]

I have now defeated Exdeath and seemingly woke up back in the original world. Seems like it's not over yet and I'm now pretty certain I know what Exdeath was up to.

 

[Janp]

THE POKECOMMUNITY GAME-ALONG - Tales of Berseria

FINAL PART

​

Oh got, it's finally over. This game took me much more longer that I thought it would. I started it on 3rd July and finished it only few moments ago. And it was great game.

The story grabbed me right from the start. The whole theme of emotions vs order was pretty well done. I kinda predicted that Artorius will be bad guy from the very first scene, but after learning about Innominat, I thought he would serve as "fake" bad guy. I thought I would kill him and then the game would reveal that he was actually the good guy all the time and was keeping Innominat, the real bad guy, in check. I'm so glad the game didn't go this route.

I enjoyed the world of Berseria. Velvet was cool character, Rokurou was cool character, Laphicet was cool character, Eizen was cool character, Magilou was cool chaarcter and Eleanor was a character. Just kidding, Eleanor was probably my favourite character for combat and I switched to her every chance I had. I'm a pirate person, so inclusion of pirates and travelling by a ship was nice addition for me. Some side characters and even villains were pretty nicely written, except of Bienfu. That was afwul character.

Combat was fine. Velvet's demon arm was pretty fun to use. My favourite character to control during combat was Eleanor. I also enjoyed Eizen and Rokurou and during the final hours I also finally tried Magilou and she was pretty solid character too. I've only tried Laphicet once and his gameplay style was too boring for me. But most of battles boiled down to me smashing one single button all the time and hope for a stun. Which got old pretty quickly. And aside from one wipe on the very first Dire Foe, 2 wipes on Oscar and Melchior, I didn't die once. Which is surprising, since I only ever used healing items starting the fight with Melchior and found out I can revive characters with Life Bottle only in battle against Artorius and Innominat.

Sadly, I had to rush through the game to be able to beat it in a month. July was a hectic month, so I only got few hours per week for gaming. I finished the game in about 39 hours while doing literally no side quest and only a handful of exploration. I did no backtracting for Katz treasure chests or even a regular treasure chest and actually started to skip them when I got to the finale part of the game. I wish I had more time to really dive in the world. I think I'll check more Tales games in the future.

 

[Cherrim]

Sadly, I had to rush through the game to be able to beat it in a month. July was a hectic month, so I only got few hours per week for gaming. I finished the game in about 39 hours while doing literally no side quest and only a handful of exploration. I did no backtracting for Katz treasure chests or even a regular treasure chest and actually started to skip them when I got to the finale part of the game. I wish I had more time to really dive in the world. I think I'll check more Tales games in the future.

You should go back in and spend another 100 hours playing the card game. It's a form of hanafuda and ohhh my gosh is it ever addictive once you get the hang of it. I think that's where most of my game hours came from, hahaha.