The RPG Thread

There's a mage upstairs in the mayor's house and a ranger in a cage over by the captain of the guard's building. Also a thief, but he's in a cave under the town that's not quite so accessible right away (plus he sucks).

I like the combat of D:OS, but I don't like the questing/exploration, mainly because trying to get around anywhere is ridiculously obnoxious and slow. I wish it were level-based like Final Fantasy Tactics, that may have made it a better game.

Eh, that's like asking them to change the game to an entirely different [sub]genre.

The game has fast travel and the teleport pyramid things you can drop on the ground as a sort of bind/recall combo. If you can't deal with the movement speed while exploring, there's:Run Speed Mod

I made sure to abuse the teleport pyramids as often as possible, especially in the trap mansion. Screw that place.

Picked up Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel for the Vita today. Heard many good things about this series

Combat in D:OS is actually pretty fuckin amazing thanks to the combinations you can pull off with the environment and other spells. I cant think of many other RPG like games that do it half as well as they did in Divinity. The first city is lush with things you CAN do and in some ways should do. Level wise i think the first explorations is for you to go underground and then deal with the zombies outside or something. Also at some point you get access to hire minions and thats when you can change up your team much.

I loved having 2 casters 1 range and 1 melee.

Archers owned but in the end i did end up going 2 melee 2 casters and have my rogue type doing absolute rape to everything.

Definitely buying a physical copy of Cold Steel (PS3 - I don't have a Vita) in the next few weeks, but I'll play Trails in the Sky 1 and 2 on steam first.

Trails games on the PC were pretty good; the first one is a bit of a slow burn, it's all about the characters and dialogue. But it's worth it imo, characters are all pretty likeable.

Ordered my physical PS3 copy of Cold Steel from Best Buy, Amazon is surprisingly out of stock for it.

Looking forward to all the Trails games, but I need to finish either FFXIII-2 or Bravely Default. 3 long RPG's at a time and I know I'll abandon at least one.

Go with Bravely Default, but understand that it isn't over until chapter 8. Anything less and you are replaying crap.

That's the current plan since I'm at my parents' place for the week with 3DS/laptop only. Kinda insane, I was lamenting a lack of shit to play only a few days ago but checked my backlog and I have BD, Fantasy Life, Etrian IV, Stella Glow, Trails 1 + 2, Metal Gear 5, FFXIII-2, Dragon's Dogma and Shadows of Mordor to go, and that's discounting any indie/heavily discounted steam/psn game that I've forgotten about.

You have some game hours to invest in, for sure. Etrian and FL will take like 100 between the two, before you touch anything else.

Might start one of those (or Trails) soon because I'm not sure BD is doing it for me. On chapter two. The job system is addictive, to be sure, and the battle system is really cool, but it's really only worth messing with on boss battles where you might die if you just auto it. I realized very early on that it feels really clunky when just attacking once every turn as you'd do fighting random trash, so I set up an auto battle where my two melees would brave 3 times and take 3 swipes and my two casters would each attack just once, leaving themselves available to do something next turn if shit survived.

Nice and painless, no clunkiness. Except starting in chapter two, it's not working. Too many battles go like this: enemy gets first strike -> poisons/blinds/silences my members -> I don't notice because I'm autobattling -> I win anyway -> I later notice my entire party is near dead and/or laden with a veritable suite of ailments. Either that or those fucking mushrooms multiply and fatigue the fuck out of me.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be grounds for complaint, but in BD's random encounters I really don't want to be messing with Brave/Defaults and I don't want tonotdo that either, because there's something about the flow of combat in the game that makes is really boring unless you take the time to plan strategically with the B/D system, which itself requires too much effort for random battles.

I have no idea if that makes any sense at all =p.

It makes sense, but unless you're way underleveled or haven't been taking advantage of Norende items it also shouldn't be happening. I leave encounters on +100% unless I'm in a dungeon that requires a ton of backtracking, or has mobs with really annoying debuffs should they ever get a turn. The shrooms are some of the best things to farm for JP, at least until you get to the point where you kill them so fast they can't multiply.

Early chapter 2 a Thief with Angel's Bow can wipe out almost any enemy party with 4x attack. The rest of the group can be anything you want to gain JP for. Alternatively, the Thief can use Thief's Knife for 4x Mug to steal components and a Monk (or whatever, since you can use Knuckle Lore for S scaling) can mop up the enemies with 4x attack from Bastet/Spiked Claws.

Late chapter 2 and beyond, practically nothing survives 2x Crescent Moon from a Valkyrie with L? Bu's Spear. If it does, you should have a Ranger with Angel's Bow to clean up. Which again leaves room for the other two characters to collect JP on whatever you like.

I've had Agn?s carrying around a Blessed Shield since mid-chapter 1. When I setup an auto-battle, it always has her using the shield for a single group Cura every turn. Even when things go horribly wrong, it's almost impossible to lose a fight vs. trash. For annoying ailments, just use immunity items or support abilities.

I'm doing alright on Norende but have made a point of not purchasing many of the weapons and armor for fear of trivializing the game, but I guess I wasn't acting rationally at all. I made a long post about how the battle system, robust as it is, sucks for random encounters, proceed to bitch about how the random encounters take too much work all the while refusing to buy gear that would lower the amount of work required. Pretty stupid.

Yeah, when you're just farming or even running from A to B with +100% encounters, you really want those overpowered items (which are still somewhat limited by Pg cost) so that you are getting +50% XP and JP from 1-Turn Hero and Unscathed Hero. It's probably worth unlocking and buying the accessory that shuts down enemy first strikes too, since it really sucks when the RNG resets your Unscathed Hero.