[SilverEars]

Been grinding on Octopath Traveler lately. Lol.

Man, what a unnecessary time sink of a jrpg! I've never played an rpg that you'd jave to grind so much to move forward in the story line.

IMO, properly designed rpg shouldn't require grinding, the gsme should guide the user to level up appropriately without grinding.

The way the game is broken down is 8 chracters with their separate stories, and you arr allowed 4 parties at any given time. Which means you will have a few that will not be gaining experience while the other 4 is being used. The issue is, you have to use a character you haven'f leveled up for their storyline and you rotate this scenario with all the 5 characters if you only swap 1 character for the story.

This makes it so that you'd jave to grind the 4th character you swap everytime to more their story forward. Their levels are so low, you have to look for the appropriate grinding spots. The map doesn't even point out what level the monsters are in different parts.

Another big issue is, different towns carry different items. The armour and weapons are not provided in a linear fashion. The wjol game is quite nonlinear that causes huge timesink issues wasting so much time.

I wish leveling up was appropriately linear so that grinding isn't necessary. If wasting player's time unnnecessarily for grinding is a poor design IMO. The game doesn't seem throught out for the player in mind, but just created elements without organization.

Chapter 1 story was very doable until I reach one of the Chapter 2 boss, who was almost impossible to defeat with recommended character level which bs. It just reaks of mistakes in the design. The boss took extremely long time to defeat like 30min! The issue was spending time grinding and not knowing if chracters were leveled enough to beat this boss. Incredivily frustrating to waste so much time on a boss.

And then I soon realized bosses take incredibly long to defeat. Also, the monsters randomly take cheap shots that take enormous damage, and you can't grind a very low level character with 3 high level character in the area of level of the 3 high level characters. So, this makes it you'd have to find the appropriate grinding spot to level up the character, and this wastes so much time since the level is so low for the other 3 chracters. I soon realized this is the process you have to keep repearing and find extremely long boss battles. What a pain this game is! Either the designers were negligent or just wanted to waste enormous chunk of our time!

I feel like I still have to beat it, which is a dumb ideal. I regret I started this, and regretting more that I stuck with it. I wish the game was designed better.

I like the 2d retro look with dimentionality to the look. So, the visuals are really nothing special in terms of technology, but sound is really good. Perhaps sound really stands out since graphics look old retro? I really like the game tracks. Really well done, and very fitting for thr moods of the game.

But, the elements added to the turn-based gameplay is attractive and gets you hooked. The boost, and break makes the battles very interesting. Breaking enemies based on their weakness, and taking advantage of it is the steategy of the battles. So, you figure out most optimal sequence of character actions to defeat the enemies as quickly as posssible (as I've said the battles can waste tons of time). With this game, you have to know the battle mechanics, or you will struggle.

 

[GreenBow]

Serious Sam 4.

Great SS game.

 

[Mizicke5273]

Been grinding on Octopath Traveler lately. Lol.

Man, what a unnecessary time sink of a jrpg! I've never played an rpg that you'd jave to grind so much to move forward in the story line.

IMO, properly designed rpg shouldn't require grinding, the gsme should guide the user to level up appropriately without grinding.

The way the game is broken down is 8 chracters with their separate stories, and you arr allowed 4 parties at any given time. Which means you will have a few that will not be gaining experience while the other 4 is being used. The issue is, you have to use a character you haven'f leveled up for their storyline and you rotate this scenario with all the 5 characters if you only swap 1 character for the story.

This makes it so that you'd jave to grind the 4th character you swap everytime to more their story forward. Their levels are so low, you have to look for the appropriate grinding spots. The map doesn't even point out what level the monsters are in different parts.

Another big issue is, different towns carry different items. The armour and weapons are not provided in a linear fashion. The wjol game is quite nonlinear that causes huge timesink issues wasting so much time.

I wish leveling up was appropriately linear so that grinding isn't necessary. If wasting player's time unnnecessarily for grinding is a poor design IMO. The game doesn't seem throught out for the player in mind, but just created elements without organization.

Chapter 1 story was very doable until I reach one of the Chapter 2 boss, who was almost impossible to defeat with recommended character level which bs. It just reaks of mistakes in the design. The boss took extremely long time to defeat like 30min! The issue was spending time grinding and not knowing if chracters were leveled enough to beat this boss. Incredivily frustrating to waste so much time on a boss.

And then I soon realized bosses take incredibly long to defeat. Also, the monsters randomly take cheap shots that take enormous damage, and you can't grind a very low level character with 3 high level character in the area of level of the 3 high level characters. So, this makes it you'd have to find the appropriate grinding spot to level up the character, and this wastes so much time since the level is so low for the other 3 chracters. I soon realized this is the process you have to keep repearing and find extremely long boss battles. What a pain this game is! Either the designers were negligent or just wanted to waste enormous chunk of our time!

I feel like I still have to beat it, which is a dumb ideal. I regret I started this, and regretting more that I stuck with it. I wish the game was designed better.

I like the 2d retro look with dimentionality to the look. So, the visuals are really nothing special in terms of technology, but sound is really good. Perhaps sound really stands out since graphics look old retro? I really like the game tracks. Really well done, and very fitting for thr moods of the game.

But, the elements added to the turn-based gameplay is attractive and gets you hooked. The boost, and break makes the battles very interesting. Breaking enemies based on their weakness, and taking advantage of it is the steategy of the battles. So, you figure out most optimal sequence of character actions to defeat the enemies as quickly as posssible (as I've said the battles can waste tons of time). With this game, you have to know the battle mechanics, or you will struggle.

For some, the grind is what matters! The grind is real! I my self, enjoy some good mindless grinding in my RPGs. Now a days, I sit down and light up a cigar while I play. It's so relaxing mashing "attack" and puffing a way, as my toons get stronger!

But what you describe is not like mindless grinding. I'm a fan of Legand of Hero's, Trails in the Sky series. Like the game you mention, you have a rotating cast of characters basically. You then have to do some grinding to level and gear them up. It's not too serious, long, or hard. But definitely not like the grind you are describing.

But some people enjoy that madness level of a grind.

 

[oqvist]

I like games that somehow manage to hide the grind. At least when you then finish the game you can actually feel you experienced something that was worth the effort. But you are always grinding no matter what

Last game grinded RDR 2. Kind of disappointed. It has super high production qualities but I never felt fully attached to Arthur. Gameplay felt a bit tired. I had better memories of RDR and undead nightmare was a refreshing dlc.In some way I liked the epilogue a bit better here but it was quite short and there wasn´t much more to discover.
Not bad at all but felt entirely flat in comparison to Kingdom Come Deliverance!

7/10

 

[SilverEars]

For some, the grind is what matters! The grind is real! I my self, enjoy some good mindless grinding in my RPGs. Now a days, I sit down and light up a cigar while I play. It's so relaxing mashing "attack" and puffing a way, as my toons get stronger!

But what you describe is not like mindless grinding. I'm a fan of Legand of Hero's, Trails in the Sky series. Like the game you mention, you have a rotating cast of characters basically. You then have to do some grinding to level and gear them up. It's not too serious, long, or hard. But definitely not like the grind you are describing.

But some people enjoy that madness level of a grind.

Yeah, I was reading Reddit for this game and it appears people like to grind to high levels. This doesn't appeal to me because so much time consumption. I want to beat it as quickly as possible and move on.

I like games that somehow manage to hide the grind. At least when you then finish the game you can actually feel you experienced something that was worth the effort. But you are always grinding no matter what

This is exactly how I feel, and makes no sense for grinding to be a requirement. It's always an option. People can grind away all the want. In Octopath, you have to grind, which is annoying.

 

[oqvist]

Sold my 2080ti in a weak moment so been looking for some vr titles again on my 1070. Tried Robinson and Seeking Dawn but I highly doubt I will find them worth my time.

Solus project I touched years ago when rift cv1 and vive was new but never got far got distracted despite lowing it! Will for sure complete it now. Amazing atmosphere in VR, very well done environments and epic introduction. It´s still buggy and has crashed on me. Pure survival titles dont generally do it for me. Forest VR I have no idea why I should play that one and why hacking timber would be so fun. Already the more arcade base building in no man sky was incredibly tedious. Fallout 4 and Skyrim house decorating is the level I can muster pretty much.

Hope problemsolving wont get too odd so I have to run for a guide all the time. I didn´t expect to have to hunt down a teleporter but hopefully just exploring thoroughly should be enough from now on.

Survival aspects you can tune down thankfully too. Found a lot of food initially so maybe not that much of a problem but don´t really understand what they add to the experience.

But atmosphere is great. Only Alien Isolation would top this. Hopefully there will be no real threats here though. I got no guns!

 

[GreenBow]

Sold my 2080ti in a weak moment so been looking for some vr titles again on my 1070.

Yeah it looks like most of us might not see a 3000 series card for months. I still might hang on for a 3080 Ti/Super.

 

[oqvist]

Yeah it looks like most of us might not see a 3000 series card for months. I still might hang on for a 3080 Ti/Super.

Dont forget about navi. This delay is Great for all impatient consumers. I need more then 10 gig so yeah 20 gb 3080 or 16 gig navi21 depending on price perhaps

 

[SilverEars]

Been grinding on Octopath Traveler lately. Lol.

Man, what a unnecessary time sink of a jrpg! I've never played an rpg that you'd jave to grind so much to move forward in the story line.

IMO, properly designed rpg shouldn't require grinding, the gsme should guide the user to level up appropriately without grinding.

The way the game is broken down is 8 chracters with their separate stories, and you arr allowed 4 parties at any given time. Which means you will have a few that will not be gaining experience while the other 4 is being used. The issue is, you have to use a character you haven'f leveled up for their storyline and you rotate this scenario with all the 5 characters if you only swap 1 character for the story.

This makes it so that you'd jave to grind the 4th character you swap everytime to more their story forward. Their levels are so low, you have to look for the appropriate grinding spots. The map doesn't even point out what level the monsters are in different parts.

Another big issue is, different towns carry different items. The armour and weapons are not provided in a linear fashion. The wjol game is quite nonlinear that causes huge timesink issues wasting so much time.

I wish leveling up was appropriately linear so that grinding isn't necessary. If wasting player's time unnnecessarily for grinding is a poor design IMO. The game doesn't seem throught out for the player in mind, but just created elements without organization.

Chapter 1 story was very doable until I reach one of the Chapter 2 boss, who was almost impossible to defeat with recommended character level which bs. It just reaks of mistakes in the design. The boss took extremely long time to defeat like 30min! The issue was spending time grinding and not knowing if chracters were leveled enough to beat this boss. Incredivily frustrating to waste so much time on a boss.

And then I soon realized bosses take incredibly long to defeat. Also, the monsters randomly take cheap shots that take enormous damage, and you can't grind a very low level character with 3 high level character in the area of level of the 3 high level characters. So, this makes it you'd have to find the appropriate grinding spot to level up the character, and this wastes so much time since the level is so low for the other 3 chracters. I soon realized this is the process you have to keep repearing and find extremely long boss battles. What a pain this game is! Either the designers were negligent or just wanted to waste enormous chunk of our time!

I feel like I still have to beat it, which is a dumb ideal. I regret I started this, and regretting more that I stuck with it. I wish the game was designed better.

I like the 2d retro look with dimentionality to the look. So, the visuals are really nothing special in terms of technology, but sound is really good. Perhaps sound really stands out since graphics look old retro? I really like the game tracks. Really well done, and very fitting for thr moods of the game.

But, the elements added to the turn-based gameplay is attractive and gets you hooked. The boost, and break makes the battles very interesting. Breaking enemies based on their weakness, and taking advantage of it is the steategy of the battles. So, you figure out most optimal sequence of character actions to defeat the enemies as quickly as posssible (as I've said the battles can waste tons of time). With this game, you have to know the battle mechanics, or you will struggle.

So, I kept at his game, and realized there's key things the player has to know to make the game easier more enjoyable.

You have to know about 'breaking' enemies. 'Breaking' is like breaking down the number of levels of shield the enemy has, and in this game this shield is shown as a numbered value. Also, enemy weaknesses are marked on them as well (although they don't provide you with them until you find out).

Also, you have to know about 'boost.' Once you boost, you can multiply the amount of damage to the enemies.

This 'boosting' and 'breaking' makes the combat really engaging and once you are aware of how to use it to your advantage, it's fun and battles become addictive. It's fun because you break down enemies shield, and you build up your boost gauge and do heavy damages to enemies at the right time (when you have a lot of boost, and enemies shield are broken down).

Not only this 'boosting' and 'breaking' is important, but also the job system provided. If you have a character that's that has their first jobs that were cleric, warrior, dancer, thief, etc.. the spells and weapon types are limited to what's provided from the jobs the 4 in the party carries. So, this is where the importance of 2ndary jobs comes in. You add 2ndary job so that they have access to additional spells and attack weapons because the weakness the enemies have varies.

So, once you expand the types of spells and weapons carried by the party, you can bring bring down the enemies shields and 'break' them much easier, and provides larger options to strategize better. Once they are in 'break' state, you can do heavy damages, especially with 'boost.'

This makes combat really intersting. You have to think about right sequences of moves of the each of the characters in the party to do as much damages to the enemies. Different enemy combination with different weaknesses makes it so that you figure out the right sequence of attacks (and party support moves) to make the attack most efficient. It's like optimization for best efficiency.

Although this battles system is real fun, I wish they made it more obvious for the player. I didn't understand the battle mechanics earlier on and struggled. Also, they should provide a map with the difficulty level of all the locations marked. It's a waste of time to go there to find out what level the enemies are in the locations. Also, you have to go to shrines to get the 2ndary job abilities, and going around all over the map without knowing where to go is a pain (although, I soon realized how they look on the map).

Also, in this game the equipment matters more than levels. So, you have to find all the best equipment as it's not linear, and scattered all over the map (this adds to waste of time factor). Not only that, you can steal equipment from a thief, and you have to use this trick to get equipment without grinding much.

Once I found this interact map, it made exploring much easier. They should have provided all this information in the game map since the game is non-linear.

http://www.octopathtravelmap.com/

Still, you have to grind the characters since thre are 8 charcters (I think this is where the 'Octopath' in the title comes from) and you can only carry a party of 4 at a time, so the rest will be way under leveled, and you have to bring them up to continue on their story. This requires 'grinding,' and it's a waste of time. I wish the game made it obvious what areas you should go though, so it doesn't feel like 'grinding.'

All of the above are not pointed out by the game, and complicated the game. Realizing all of the above is what made this game a challenge and it's definitely not for rpg newbies (which I consider myself to be). So, this game has high learning curve.

I feel like, the battle mechanics are open like Final Fantasy tactics in terms of strategy, which makes battles very engaging. So, battle do not feel simple and repetitive. The challenge provided complicates it, but also makes it more engaging.

All in all, I recommend at this point. Battles are real fun, but stay away if you are not looking for something that require 'grinding' as it's a real timesink.

So, the way understand the title 'Octopath Traveler' is Octo meaning 8 characters and path meaning, 8 individual story paths.

What I like about the look of Octopath traveler is the snow are villlage aesthetics. Looks really beautiful and dreamy!

 

[SilverEars]

Sold my 2080ti in a weak moment so been looking for some vr titles again on my 1070. Tried Robinson and Seeking Dawn but I highly doubt I will find them worth my time.

Solus project I touched years ago when rift cv1 and vive was new but never got far got distracted despite lowing it! Will for sure complete it now. Amazing atmosphere in VR, very well done environments and epic introduction. It´s still buggy and has crashed on me. Pure survival titles dont generally do it for me. Forest VR I have no idea why I should play that one and why hacking timber would be so fun. Already the more arcade base building in no man sky was incredibly tedious. Fallout 4 and Skyrim house decorating is the level I can muster pretty much.

Hope problemsolving wont get too odd so I have to run for a guide all the time. I didn´t expect to have to hunt down a teleporter but hopefully just exploring thoroughly should be enough from now on.

Survival aspects you can tune down thankfully too. Found a lot of food initially so maybe not that much of a problem but don´t really understand what they add to the experience.

But atmosphere is great. Only Alien Isolation would top this. Hopefully there will be no real threats here though. I got no guns!

VR goggle panels needs to be OLED. The backlight on LCD are much brighter when you isolate the display from the outside light, and this causes washed out colors and black levels to look grey. Also refresh rates needs to be increased. I recommend Half Life Alyx, Lone Echo, and The Climb. Other than that, VR doesn't seem worthwhile.

I still use 1080 gtx from a few years back and no motivation to upgrade. Graphics card industry for consumers is a real mess! I'm not paying inflated prices. I think 1080ti would have been the best purchase looking back.

 

[oqvist]

VR goggle panels needs to be OLED. The backlight on LCD are much brighter when you isolate the display from the outside light, and this causes washed out colors and black levels to look grey. Also refresh rates needs to be increased. I recommend Half Life Alyx, Lone Echo, and The Climb. Other than that, VR doesn't seem worthwhile.

I still use 1080 gtx from a few years back and no motivation to upgrade. Graphics card industry for consumers is a real mess! I'm not paying inflated prices. I think 1080ti would have been the best purchase looking back.

There is plenty more vr titles making it worthwhile As for black levels there is lcd panels that get close to OLED blacks. Less SDE also help with creating a more realistic image. Most OLEDS uses pentile structure which don´t have as many subpixels as rgb layouts and bigger gaps between pixels. Also some have to sacrifice blacks due to missfires so they don´t have them entirely shut down to avoid this issue. Still in general a bit better then lcd but it´s not my oled tv blacks.

For me to get oled again they really must abandon pentile.

 

[GreenBow]

Dont forget about navi. This delay is Great for all impatient consumers. I need more then 10 gig so yeah 20 gb 3080 or 16 gig navi21 depending on price perhaps

Am bound to Nvidia because of a G-Sync monitor.

It's stupid that the 3080 is either going to be in 10GB or 20GB variants. 10GB is probably not enough for how long the GPU will last, and 20GB is too much.

 

[SilverEars]

Sorry for turning this into Octopath blog, but I need to rant. lol

I got sick of this game as I got to chapter 4. The guidance of the game was real poor to waste the player's time. It seems like you grind less if you play with the party of 4, and then play again with the remaining 4. I guess the point of the open-ness of the character quantity choice for open-ness of the gameplay, but it backfires. The non-linear approach really backfires in terms of gameplay and story.

When I got to Chapter 4, and the enemy was doing 2k damage per hit, I said F-it, I'm done . lol I'm not going to go chase after whereever those armors (whereever in the map they maybe, which is just stupid time waste, has no benefit what so ever to doing this) are to reduce damage and grind for hours and hours.

The stories are typical Jrpg cliche, who cares stuff. So, I just pass through the story like it's nothing. The battles are where it's at. The breaking system is fun, but can be really difficult since you have to figure out ways so you break the enemies in time so they cannot attack. That is the strategy I believe with enemies that do 2k damage, and the highest HP amount your characters have is 3k. I just find this ridiculous I got to spend hours grinding. Not worth the time, but also want to get it overwith. There are 8 ending after all, and I'm not going through this grinding process for all 8. Negatives outweigh the positives in this case.

I think some people really enjoy this game with it challenges with the many choices to solve how to beat the bosses efficiently. To me, the right choices seem hidden at times and limited however.

Now, onto something worth spending time on. Such bs time waster this was due to it's design.

Probably play Mario or something after experiencing something like this.

 

[Kukuk]

Working through my back catalog, I just beat Greedfall. Now there's another 6/10.

This is sort of an odd game in that the whole is worse than the sum of its part. Looking at each aspect of the game, it's really decently made for a low budget game. The overall story is pretty interesting, the sidequests don't feel completely pointless, the combat is fairly satisfying, and it's nice that it gives you multiple ways to complete quests. But despite all this I didn't love the game. There's little concessions to each of these parts that detracts from the overall experience, and it's kind of a shame that the game doesn't do one thing exceptionally well. I feel like the side quests are closest, but it's so easy to end a quest with the best possible outcome. Charisma checks are like the ultimate "press button to win" mechanic, but if you don't have enough charisma there's always intuition, and if by some chance you have neither of those very high, there's usually a companion character that can help you cheese through conversations.

I think the biggest drag of the game, though, is the uninteresting lore and setting. If you're thinking about playing this game, I sure hope you like forests and swamps, because that's all you'll get. Different weather? Nope. Plains, deserts, tundra, etc? Nope. Just forests and swamps, with some caves thrown in here and there. I feel like they also missed an opportunity to have settlement building and upgrading, which is odd considering the nature of the game.

I'm also playing The Witcher 3 at the moment, and it's pretty clear that Greefall drew a LOT of inspiration from it.

 

[SilverEars]

Started play Dark Souls 3, and I died. lol Not the friendliest game in terms of having the user easily get into the game. I've looked around to see what's the essential things to know in order to get decent at this game, and the most important thing is acknowledging that the act of rolling for dodging causes invincibility for the short duration of the roll (in which I think is ghey). Anyway, I have no interest in continuing this game. Don't see the appeal of continuously dying. lol

Started play Persona 5, and the visuals are quite nice, but the story about school in Japan is kinda bland and cliche. In Japan, does life revolve around school only? Hopefully the rpg mechanics makes up for this blandness of typical Jrpg stories.