Metal Saga, are you serious??

[BDGE]

Started this up last night, watched the brief intro, was given a choice to be a Hunter or a Mechanic. I went the tinkering route...Game Over.

Funny. So much so I turned it off.

[BobJustBob]

Sigh.

[extarbags]

Wait, so the game just ends if you pick Mechanic?

[Jab2565]

Yeah pretty much, I got about 10 hours in, then I got tired of the game.

[BDGE]

Pretty much, after a bit of dry wit, the credits roll and the title screen re-emerges. I actually did find it funny, but all the talk of emergent gameplay, I felt gypped being shackled. I'm guessing the freedom derives from choosing to perform in milk-chugging contests, or DDR-exercises with half-naked men.

I did play a little longer as a silly hunter, but I couldn't find a vehicle in the first dungeon before reaching the boss, I musta missed some stupid fork in the labyrinth. I chose death by boss over backtracking.

[Jab2565]

Yeah you made a wrong turn the first vehicle is before the boss, I'm past a train section in a place where everything is killing me in 1 or 2 hits. The dungeon design is horrible, a huge maze with rooms that look the same except for 1 or 2 rooms.

[tromik]

Quarter to Three's Kitsune raved about it!

there's SO MUCH TO DO!

[Miramon]

I thought the game was kind of cute, but it's terribly grindy, and the dungeons as stated are not very well designed.

Seriously though, if you find yourself in a place where you are getting killed, you shouldn't be there, go somewhere else and level up. Don't you guys remember the kind of game that lets you go places that are too high level without spoonfeeding you all you need to do in exactly the right order? You know, the opposite of final fantasy, where the final boss is the easiest fight in the game?

[KaoFloppy]

As one of the people that helped hype it, I never actually finished it. I think I put in about 40 hours already, and I'm only half-done the wanted list. It *is* awfully grindy, so I got tired of it. I don't think I'll return to it anytime this year, but at least it's not hard to pick it up again from where I'd left off. Just wander around some more and pick off the rest of the wanted list...

pfreak: go back, and check the top-right (North-East) corner of the world map.

[Jab2565]

That's where I stopped playing, I went back to the sewers in ghost town to find one of the guys and got stuck in the sewers, as well as the cave where your supposed to fight some kind of boss.

[Moggraider]

Seriously though, if you find yourself in a place where you are getting killed, you shouldn't be there, go somewhere else and level up.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the guiding principle to playing every JRPG, ever.

You know, the opposite of final fantasy, where the final boss is the easiest fight in the game?

Disagree. I know FF main quests are pretty easy, but they usually ramp up the difficulty right at the end, making it hard for speed players like me. The biggest examples for me:

FFIV and the moon in general, which had nothing but monsters that owned me.
FFVI and the last dungeon in general, if not Kefka himself.
FFIX and that last boss that comes out of nowhere and gave me a hard time.
FFX's Overdrive Sin and Jecht (omg sorry didn't mean 2 spoil).

Admittedly, VII's last area was not ramped up, and VIII I have little recollection of.

I, II, III, V I haven't played through.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

The boss in FF I, the original NES version, was irresponsibly overpowered. Something like 10x the HP of the last boss, plus he could heal himself to full pretty much whenever he wanted. I think a lot of people got to Chaos and then quit in frustration.

I suppose VII's boss was a bit underpowered, but mostly I think it's just that if you've been playing even reasonably intelligently, you've probably got Cloud equipped with Auto-Haste and Attack All materia, and he's probably hitting for the high thousands with each attack, making just about every fight trivial.

VIII's boss was reasonably challenging, but more importantly the whole ending "sequence" was hard (and annoying) as hell. Y'know, where the game takes away all your abilities and makes you fight a bunch of bosses to get them back. Just like taking away all your weapons in an FPS. I'm one of the few who genuinely liked VIII, but getting to that point made me walk away from the game for a while.

[Lizard_King]

Disagree. I know FF main quests are pretty easy, but they usually ramp up the difficulty right at the end, making it hard for speed players like me. The biggest examples for me:

FFIX and that last boss that comes out of nowhere and gave me a hard time.

Unless you mean the last of the optional bosses, Ozma, then all your experience reflects is that which any speed player faces in the endgame of an rpg. The whole point of speed playing is to ramp up the difficulty, and obviously the discrepancies between your characters and the game's villains are just going to be exacerbated the better you are at it.
Anyone who proceeds in FF9 at anything below breakneck pace would find it tame in the endgame, with at most a few trial balloon deaths before the patterns become workable.

FFX's Overdrive Sin and Jecht (omg sorry didn't mean 2 spoil).
Once again, more a function of your style of playing than what you were actually up against. Indeed, many random encounters had a much greater chance of player death, particularly as you get into the more absurd enemy areas with the status afflictions and Tonberries. Since the arena demonstrates quite handily that it is in fact very possible to make a wide variety of monsters that are difficult to near impossible to beat at any level within the game system, it can only be assumed that it was, in fact, developer choice that made the ending that easy.

I can't speak to the rest of your FF experiences, but I have to say your mileage varies from almost every anecdote I've heard on the topic. There's a reason they include bonus bosses in every game, and it isn't because the existing ending is too difficult. Otherwise the masochism that many completist jrpg fans so plainly enjoy would not be possible, and handling it that way leaves normal players to plow through with a middling challenge, and allows speed players to get the challenge they must crave. Everyone's happy, and no one was demeaned by having to play it on easy.

Of course, I could be assuming incorrectly that you speed play for the challenge of it, and it is simply out of an illusion that totally avoiding any kind of grind or exploration in most jrpg's will save you time in the long run. If that is the case, well, good luck with that.

[Moggraider]

I speed play for the increased challenge, AND for avoiding grind and exploration :). The somewhat heightened challenge throughout the game is nice, though the FF's are still easier than other series. FF's definitely step up at the end. I would say my method does save me time - some people report spending 80 hours on FFX, whereas the only RPG's I've spent more than 40 with are Xenogears and Baten Kaitos, both of which just plain require it by virtue of the length of their stories.

[KaoFloppy]

There is a slight (well not really, but anyways) mechanical difference between the restrictiveness of typical jrpgs, and Metal Saga. Typical jrpgs physically bound you to specific city/dungeon/region as dictated by the narrative, until 1/2 to 2/3 of the story. You simply cannot backtrack or leave the region until some objective is done, then you're moved to the next area for the next objective. Then you have things like Dragon Quest that demands you to stay in the current area to level up some more anyways, before moving on.

Metal Saga bounds the player by using enemy levels. It gives you the illusion that the world is open. (1/3 of the world is reachable when you get your first car, 1/2-2/3 of the world is reachable when you get the train ticket maybe 5 hrs into the game.) However, each region has enemies of specific levels assigned, such that it becomes obvious to the player that he is not meant to be somewhere yet.

Oh I see that the topic shifted to speed play. I can't comment on it, 'cos I don't do it. I suppose speed playing is possible in Metal Saga, because it is always possible to run from an enemy, but without a strategy guide, I would have to play it once slowly first, to figure out which areas and items are not important.

[Miramon]

It certainly is possible to race through MS because:

a) You can run from most foes.

b) Healing is fast, easy, and cheap if you don't wipe (if you do wipe, you pay the annoying "wait for resurrection macinema scene to complete" penalty).

c) Certain foes who are easily defeatable give 1 level a kill even in middling high level bands, so if you just find the right zone and flee from the foes you can't deal with you can level very quickly. For example, if you carry dual or triple main AA guns, you can often clear a rack of high level flying foes in a single shot from a single tank.

d) Cash is pretty easy to get for upgrades; if you ever do run out you can grind for 10 minutes to get the cash you need. You can often go on to the "next" city for affordable higher level upgrades even if you can't yet handle the bosses in the area.

e) There are decent tanks just buried in the ground for you to dig up in reasonably accessible places, though a less than hardcore (or unspoiled) player who is not interested in pinging every inch of desert might miss many of them.

[Jasper]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the guiding principle to playing every JRPG, ever.

Steambot Chronicles didn't have this. As a result I found it far more enjoyable than other JRPGs I've tried out. Clearly it's possible, but it's damn hard to find the ones that aren't grindy. Asking for suggestions often yields suggestions for games that are merely less grindy. :-/

[Moggraider]

You have a point. The only JRPG that I considered not grindy at all was Baten Kaitos, because you got a new card for your deck most every battle you fought. That was always cool and kept me playing.

[MatthewF]

One of the most satisfying battles I've ever had was Kefka in VI. Edgar was my last player alive and was down to 60 HP. I pulled off a critical with my last swing and thought I was done for until I saw the typical boss defeat screen shake+flash. Easy? No way. I think I was out of breath for the entire duration of the credits...