Games that don't hold up.

[Anonymous No.5368643]

Games that were well regarded at the time but really don't hold up today.

I think Skies of Arcadia fits this. At the time the graphics were stunning and the story was "charming". But these days it just seems derivative and a mess. The story is cliche and far too cheesy. The battles are dull. The town and dungeon lay outs are poorly designed confusing messes. I know this game still had it's fans, but I personally don't think it still deserves to be highly regarded.

[Anonymous No.5368656]

I mean even back then the combat was bland and the story was super cliche. The reason it's highly regarded is because the game world felt massive and unique with the flying ships and islands, and the art style was charming.

[Anonymous No.5368667]

>>5368656
I've been playing it recently, which is what spurred me to make the post. But The game world actually seems pretty constricted even for the time, if people actually believed that they probably just bought into hype.

[Anonymous No.5368669]

>>5368667
Also, I will ad that "charming" art style and an "open" world is not all that matters to make a game good.

[Anonymous No.5368692]

>>5368667
I replayed it recently too and I noticed the same thing. I think part of the facade of how "big" the gameworld feels can be attributed to the concept of exploration in that game. Navigating through the harsh winds to find "legendary" Ixa Taka makes the journey feel much longer than it actually is. Same thing when you leave Esperanza and are trying to go through the Dark Rift. Couple this with the very distinct regions having their own art style and cultures and I think they did a pretty good job creating an illusion of scale.

It's not my favorite game but I'll always appreciate it for the setting and for taking a different approach to the typical "big character walks around on a map" overworld design of so many of the jrpg's of that time period.

[Anonymous No.5368730]

Still better than modern jarpigs that got rid of overworlds, have extremely linear dungeons, and use button-mashing combat rather than strategic turn-based combat.

[Anonymous No.5368859]

>>5368643
BACK OFF!
ALPHA STOOORRRRMMM!

Still a fun game.

[Anonymous No.5368870]

>>5368643
Still better than FF6.

[Anonymous No.5368876]

>>5368643
Name a better RPG then.

[Anonymous No.5368879]

>>5368730

[Anonymous No.5368893]

RIP collectathons.

They were never good.

[Anonymous No.5368894]

>>5368876
Final Fantasy II

[Anonymous No.5368902]

>>5368667
It's not a huge world, I agree, but I think the presentation was really good. You really feel like an explorer instead of just going from point A to point B. The discoveries help that, and the new ground you're constantly breaking as well. Crossing the South Ocean, making it through the Dark Rift, discovering that he world is round, and going to the fucking moon.

I wouldn't call it 'exploration' since you're not usually allowed to deviate that much from your path (like in most JRPGs) but it is imo one of the games where your own progression feels the most satisfying. Your experience may be different and it's possible that this isn't the case if you don't have some nostalgia for the game, but that's how I feel about it. Played it a few months ago and was absolutely not disappointed with any aspect of it, aside from the combat which is a bit flat and has a largely useless magic system.

[Anonymous No.5368908]

>>5368902
Oh, just to make it clear that I wasn't intending to be as contradictive as the post sounds: what I like is the feeling of exploration, while I acknowledge that the game doesn't offer much actual, real exploration (like many JRPGs, especially at the time, and still now).

[Anonymous No.5368910]

>>5368893
but you're wrong

[Anonymous No.5368913]

>>5368669
>Also, I will ad that "charming" art style and an "open" world is not all that matters to make a game good.
It at least puts it above modern AAA games which have an "open" world but without the charming art style.

[Anonymous No.5368916]

>>5368902
>>5368908
That's what makes it good faggot. If it was a true open world, it would just be full of copypasted bullshit.

[Anonymous No.5368918]

>>5368656
>and the story was super cliche.
There's nothing wrong witch cliche. It's a hack writer who thinks they have to keep the audience guessing all the time and constantly throws retarded twists around.

A good story doesn't shock the player or twist conventions. It invests the player so they're willing to go along with the ride. Yeah you can pretty much tell every direction he story might go but you still get caught up in the flow and moment to moment so you forget to be a cynical shit who rolls their eyes while pointing out everything like a cunt.

[Anonymous No.5368940]

>>5368894
No one actually likes FFI or FFII.

[Anonymous No.5368948]

>>5368940
FF2 is unironically one of my favorites in the whole series. Though to be fair I wouldn't call myself an FF fan. Also 1 sucks.

[Anonymous No.5368953]

>>5368643
I still think based on the gamecube version that its a solid RPG. Its flawed, but I thought it was flawed when I first played it, those flaws haven't gotten that much worse with time in my eyes.

[Anonymous No.5368956]

>>5368902
It reminded me a lot of Grandia, where the things you were doing and achievements you made actually felt like they had some really gravitas to them. It may have all just been bells and whistles but escaping the imperial fortress, crossing the dark rift and challenging the gigas felt like more than just dungeons and boss fights.

And when you made the right dialogue choice and got that cool sound effect and saw your rank go up? awesome

[Anonymous No.5368982]

>>5368643
What's your favorite RPG so I can tell you why you're wrong?

[Anonymous No.5368994]

>>5368902
This. Skies of Arcadia has wonderful worldbuilding and a sense of progression, which is something a lot of RPGs lack nowadays because everyone just wants to take a shortcut to epic, world-ending mayhem and god-killing chaos ASAP. Skies of Arcadia built a world and made everything you accomplish feel important and nigh-impossible, even if it was scripted and inevitable. Grandia is one of the few other JRPGs that does this. I wouldn't call either the "best" games ever made, but they're both near the top of my list because of how well they do what they do.

Also, Skies of Arcadia has one of the best localizations of any game because the translators were smart enough to gut the dialogue and re-write it from scratch instead of translate every sentence directly. And the flavor text in that game is so delicious I could read it all day.

>>5368918
Yeah. At that rate you could call every game "cliche", because they pretty much always end up in a big final battle that the good guy wins. Yayyy!

>>5368956
Exactly this. I've always been a fan of Skies, but only just played Grandia last year. Absolutely loved it. Both are games that understand the importance of making the player feel like they're on an adventure. I loved how, at the beginning of Grandia, they make a big deal out of taking the train a few miles, and by the end of disc 2, you're crossing whole continents and biomes like it ain't shit.

[Anonymous No.5369004]

>>5368643
>The town and dungeon lay outs are poorly designed confusing messes
How? There's a minimap for everything, and all of the town's are pretty dense and well-connected. I daresay you're a bit of a retard if you found any of it "confusing". Fuckin' zoomers.

[Anonymous No.5369014]

>>5368643
>hold up
the retarded hot takes board is that way >>>/v/

[Anonymous No.5369015]

>>5368994
Yeah. Grandia one starts slow but at the end of the game when you look back at how when this started you where just a dumb kid playing pretend and now are facing down an ancient evil after traveling all over the whole world? Well it really does feel Grand.

And I also agree about games these days feeling like they need to rush to the epic bits. I say that about a lot of things too, not just games. Nobody wants to experience a good moment anymore. There's no build up. Everyone only wants to see the huge TOP10 anime epic moments. You have to peak and valley this shit. Epic moments feel that way because you took the time to go through the villages, learn the culture of the place you're in and slowly work towards the climax. It's not just shooting huge energy attacks and massive explosions.

[Anonymous No.5369062]

>>5369015
Couldn't have said it better myself. People who can appreciate SoA/Grandia always seem to be patricians who understand what makes a good JRPG.

[Anonymous No.5369124]

>>5369062
It just really bums me out to see people who want to rush through everything and can't appreciate the journey.

[Anonymous No.5369275]

>>5369124
>Lunar
I enjoyed this when I was 12 or 13. I tried to replay it recently and cringed so hard that I had to put the game down in the first 30 minutes. Easily the most juvenile, bland faggoty shit out there. I've grown out of most JRPGs honestly, but stuff like FFT remains timeless.

[Anonymous No.5369282]

>>5369275
Wow you sure are mature, mister. I hope one day I can be as cool as you.

[Anonymous No.5369306]

Super Mario Bros. (the first one)

[Anonymous No.5369319]

>>5369306
What? That's the best SMB game in the trilogy (quadrilogy?)

Pure fast gameplay, reasonably challenging, no continues, the best for speedrunning.

[Anonymous No.5369320]

>>5369014
Have fun over there.

[Anonymous No.5369357]

>>5369275
I never played Lunar when I was a kid, but I've watched my friend play one of the remakes. The intro and voice acting were cringe city, but it looked like a decent game.

[Anonymous No.5369381]

>>5368643
>At the time the graphics were stunning and the story was "charming".
Wrong, everyone knew the game looked dated when it came out, reviews even openly described the graphics as bad for the GCN version. The plot was described as "typical teenagers fighting the empire".
>The battles are dull.
The battles are fun, especially the ship battles. The only problem is the pace of the game should be increased and there should be more variety and challenge in non-boss ship battles.
>The story is cliche and far too cheesy.
The story is 90% of the game's appeal, or rather the world building. It's a game openly admitting it's just all of the jRPG cliches stuffed under one roof with the exception of the emo main character. It DOESN'T take itself seriously, it just tries to give you some bad guys to hate and fun loving good guys to rescue or play as, and earnestly hopes you enjoy it. All of the strange areas you visit are essentially just content meant to make different parts of the game memorable to you.

This is that type of thing where there's a line between when a jRPG is a video game and when it's just a glorified cinematic experience. Skies isn't a perfect game but it made sure to be a game.

[Anonymous No.5369383]

>>5369319

If you're counting NSMB as a SMB game, then there's more than 4 SMB games.

[Anonymous No.5369395]

>>5369383

[Anonymous No.5369396]

>>5369124
Wait do the GameArts rpgs all take place on the same world(s)?

[Anonymous No.5369402]

>>5369383
I meant the NES games. My bad

[Anonymous No.5369569]

>>5369381
>everyone knew the game looked dated when it came out
Different anon, but when the game originally dropped on Dreamcast, it was praised quite a bit for its graphics because they were indeed pretty fantastic. You have to keep in mind that Dreamcast was the first 6th gen system, but in terms of tech, it's really like Gen 5.5. SoA dropped before people really had a taste of what the Gamecube, PS2 and XBox were capable of. If you look at the reviews of the Gamecube port from 2003, then you start to see the criticisms of it's graphics, but most still admit that the game has genuinely pretty moments.

The key to SoA's graphics, though, is that they're just stylized enough to not look totally dated. Yes, you can see the polygons, but the fact that they were smart enough to use anime-styled face textures and generally bright, simple color schemes gave the game a kind of semi-wind waker effect of being a 3D cartoon. It looks old, but not explicitly bad. It also helps that the textures in that game are stellar and tend not to suffer from much compression, and lighting and atmosphere effects are solid as well. Those are the kind of things that make a game look good without having to rely simply on high poly counts.

[Anonymous No.5369586]

>>5369569
>and generally bright, simple color schemes
Man I tell you, nothing quite beats a good Dreamcast blue.

[Anonymous No.5369605]

>>5369275
It's standard animeshit. When people talk of 90s anime they always talk of over violent testosterone ridden gritty cyber punk movies like Akira, Bebop, GitS, X:1999, Gundam Wing or whatever but in reality the majority of that era anime has always been soft lighthearted like that.

[Anonymous No.5369749]

>>5368893

I played Banjo Kazooie for the first time last year and I really got into it.

[Anonymous No.5369774]

>>5368893
Banjo holds up, dk64 however...

[Anonymous No.5369775]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this game is just bad. It was always trite, derivative and boring. The only people who seem to like it are those who had it as <3 Babbie's First jRPG <3.
I get it: you never forget your first. It's why, despite it being boring as fuckall, I still have a soft spot for Phantasy Star. But you'd think that by the time SoA came out, developers would be trying something new every now and again. Guess not.

[Anonymous No.5369798]

>>5369775

[Anonymous No.5369883]

>>5368643
>The story is cliche and far too cheesy.
That was one of the vest parts of it though.
I loved how they just flipped off any angst or giving up attitudes.

The story absolutely holds up. I wish there were more high optimism plots in games these days with up-beat main characters.

[Anonymous No.5369895]

>>5369775
Still waiting to hear a better game.

[Anonymous No.5369896]

>>5368893
They are still good, it's just that people forgot how to make them

[Anonymous No.5369898]

>>5369775
This. The patrician Sega jarpig is Phantasy Star IV, not this dumbed down garbage.

[Anonymous No.5369907]

>>5369898
The patrician Sega JRPG is Phantasy Star I. IV IS the dumbed down garbage of that series.

[Anonymous No.5369913]

>>5369907
And yet it's still the best 16 bit RPG of all time.

[Anonymous No.5369916]

>>5369907
IV's battle engine shits all over I's, though.

>but muh dungeons that all look the same
Who gives a shit, autist.

[Anonymous No.5370118]

>>5369124
>>5369396
They don't. That's just fanart. If I remember right the artist made it for one of GA's anniversaries.
KEK @ Lutina included as Xtreme's main girl though

[Anonymous No.5370124]

>>5370118
Well who else is it gonna be? In what little bits of story Xtreme had she's more or less the closest.

[Anonymous No.5370138]

>>5370124
Diene, who has actual relevance in the story. But she's overlooked because she isn't playable.
By contrast half the player characters, Lutina included, were irrelevant. Sadly that's just the way the game was written. Shame, because the cast was generally fun, just screwed over by a bad setup and script.

[Anonymous No.5370147]

>>5370138
They where a surprisingly chatty bunch in the post game.

[Anonymous No.5370154]

Syphon Filter
https://youtu.be/wZgAEytXah4
The American attempt at the Hollywood thriller video game genre that Kojima ushered

[Anonymous No.5370158]

>>5369774
dk64 didnt hold up even in its day

[Anonymous No.5370160]

>>5369381
My thinking is close to this. Sure the story is generic RPG fair, but its well done generic RPG fair. The graphics are not great but they fit, and the game is full of stuff to do.

It's solid.

[Anonymous No.5370185]

>>5368994
SoA has some of the comfiest towns in vidya. The base that you build is comfy as fuck.

[Anonymous No.5370186]

>>5369004
The towns in SoA are some of the best in any RPG. The amount of detail in them is a joy.

[Anonymous No.5370190]

>>5369381
SOA has amazing texture detail.

[Anonymous No.5370193]

>>5370186
>>5370185
SoA is one of the few JRPGs Ill pop in just to sort of "hang out." Like not even grind or do anything. Just sort of sit on my ship and soak in the ambiance. Watch my NPC crews animations. Walk around the towns.

[Anonymous No.5370214]

>>5368643
Nah it always kind of sucked. Graphically it was good for the time but every thing else was extremely lacking. I remember wanting a good jrpg for my Dreamcast back in the day and this was as good as it got. Pretty sure Dreamcast owners who were big jrpg fans were just starved for a good jrpg and just latched on to this game. I basically forced myself to finish this game.

[Anonymous No.5370279]

>>5369896
>hey pick that up
>and that
>AND that
>you've picked them all up? Well let's go to the next level AND DO IT AGAIN

[Anonymous No.5370342]

>>5369605
And then it got worse in the '00 and '10.
One could think a bigger cariety with the higher demand and cheap technologies. but its not the case.

[Anonymous No.5370350]

>>5370279
Yeah, you are one of those shitters that don't understand how cllocta-thon supposed to work.

Collectibles are supposedto be used as guildance tools for exploration, leading the player from one place to another, one he would unlikely to look at if there was not a string of pickups leading there, and showing alternative paths.

One of the mistakes modern collectathon wannabes do is sprinkling collectibles around with no rhyme or reason, which shows complete lack of understanding why collectibles were introduced in the first place. Yukulelee is one such example.

[Anonymous No.5370391]

>>5370193
>he plays a game to "hang out"
cringe

[Anonymous No.5370489]

>>5368643
I played the game back in 2012 and absolutely loved it, it became my favourite game of all time, and that's because it was the one game that I played that made me go "oh shit, this is more than a game to me, it's like an adventure" and no other game made me feel like that besides Pokémon when I was a kid.

The only problems the game have comes from it's encounter rate, the terrible PAL port (no fucking VGA so it's 50hz only) and the slow as fuck ship battles. But honestly, it's all subjective to me. I loved the game for more than just it's "cliche story" and "dull battles".

Hell, those things didn't even occur to me when I went though it. I was just having a lot of fun and enjoying myself in this cool world, with a great cast of characters and great music.

>>5369883
>tfw people still use my 1080p screenshots I post
feels good man

[Anonymous No.5370518]

>>5368643
Skies of Shit never really seemed like a good series to begin with. I tried the NGC game and I couldn't get into it.

[Anonymous No.5370521]

>>5369907
>IV IS the dumbed down garbage of that series.

but it looked amazing and by your logic the only thing not dumbed down would be the nightmare that is Wizardry I-IV.

[Anonymous No.5370526]

>>5369883
>I wish there were more high optimism plots in games these days with up-beat main characters

[Anonymous No.5370780]

>>5369381
The normal dungeon fights are dull, there are so many of them and they all begin and end with a Pyr-spell and that's about it, there aren't any interesting mechanics outside of a few bosses and even then it's not all that great. The ship battles are a neat idea, but suffer from being very repetitious like the normal fights.

There are also numerous little niggling things that just make the game a pain to fully complete without a guide, the discoveries for one are basically on a need-to-know basis, you can't find them without just going through the monster infested overworld clicking "A" like a maniac. Something like a perimeter in which the discovery is after buying a hint or maybe a way to douse for the things would've been great.

Overall it's a charming game and has a lot of fun and interesting things about it but it does fall short in some areas no matter how much nostalgia you paste over it.

[Anonymous No.5371145]

>>5370391
feel good in knowing this child will never reproduce and be swiftly forgotten by his parents and society

[Anonymous No.5371498]

>>5370780
Believe it or not, I actually managed to unlock the three secrets on my very first play through of the game without any sort of guide.

This was back before I knew looking something up online was a thing you could do.

[Anonymous No.5371523]

>>5370780
I didn't have any of these problems when I played it as a kid. You seem to be confusing your own personal shortcomings with the game.

[Anonymous No.5371549]

>>5370193
Same. I loved that they let you walk around your ship and check stuff out and talk to your crew. Big reason I want a sequel is that there's so much more potential for ship/crew/base customization that would really set it apart from other JRPGs.

[Anonymous No.5371572]

>>5371523
Congratulations, you're better at Skies of Arcadia than me.

[Anonymous No.5371856]

>>5369605
>over violent testosterone ridden gritty cyber punk
>Cowboy Bebop
I see you've never actually watched Bebop.

[Anonymous No.5372023]

>>5371856
He also threw gundam fucking wing in there lol. It's a safebet he's never seen more than 5 minutes of anything.

[Anonymous No.5372028]

>>5369907
>false flagging out the ass
No one who loves PS1 unironically shits on IV.

[Anonymous No.5372037]

>>5368643
hey its my niggas from Gallia.

[Anonymous No.5373370]

>>5368643
i bought this back when it was new because it was being praised so much. never got into it.

[Anonymous No.5373407]

Why is it that people who love Skies of Arcadia are also huge fans of Grandia and Lunar?

[Anonymous No.5373425]

>>5368643
i only played it for the first time about two years ago and i liked it a lot.

it's just a fun mindless adventure romp with flying pirates.

it's not deep. no angsty protagonists, no villains fallen from grace with complicated motivations.

just solid and old school jrpg fun. if that's dull to you, then definitely don't play skies of arcadia.

[Anonymous No.5373426]

I dropped secret of mana because I hated the combat. Funny because I see the combat praised all the time.

[Anonymous No.5373516]

>>5373407
I like Lunar 1 (SCD) and I'm okay with L2 (also SCD), but not SoA. I really, really dislike SoA.
Never played Grandia.

[Anonymous No.5373524]

>>5368643
Back when it came out, it was just people who literally only owned a DC that thought it was amazing. Every idort alive was like "meh, it's OK..."

[Anonymous No.5373540]

>>5373524
Fucking idorts. Riding our public transportation. Oughta be a law!

[Anonymous No.5373578]

CANNONS

[Anonymous No.5373593]

>>5373407
Very traditional rags-to-riches plots (small fry dreams of adventure and fame and glory and his dreams come true). Similar color palettes and art direction. They all have a SEGA vibe

[Anonymous No.5374579]

>>5368893
Nothing wrong with a simple and comfy experience.