What's eShopping about?

I want to play Obra Dinn very much, but I won't be playing on Switch launch because I have other things this month!

Balladeer wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

However, I'm not playing or buying new games until Christmas except Luigi's Mansion 3, so it's on the watchlist for now.

Not even Pokémon?

Christmas game! Pokémon's always been a Christmas game for me.

masofdas wrote:

It might be on phones but none of us are going to play like that.

Not even Death Stranding, Jay

I genuinely do not trust the quality of that game to buy it at launch.

If it's looking like a blinder, then I'll see if the parents will buy me it for Christmas. If it's shite, I'll watch a Let's Play or something.

In other news, I've been playing a bit of Dragon Quest - the first one! It's pretty dated and archaic as you'd expect. There's only one party member, very few tactical options beyond attacking and a handful of spells and the world is open to a fault in that it's very easy to crest a hill and get murdered by a dragon or a terrifying axe knight, but there's something pleasant about its simplicity. It doesn't seem long at all - I reckon I'll be done with in 10-12 hours which is refreshingly short for a JRPG. It's also great to not have to worry about raising an entire party and instead just focusing on my one dude and collecting weapons and armour for him. If nothing else, it's a neat history piece and I'm interested to check out the rest of the series. Maybe I'll have better luck with DQII compared to my time with FFII...

I was just thinking spoilers for Death Stranding as it's one of the last games of the year that's really story focused as Pokmon is beat gyms, win league, become champ and Luigi Mansion 3 is Luigi gets a Hotel and needs to save Mario.

Yeah, I considered that aspect, but LM3 is the perfect game for me during what will likely be a stressful period when I'm moving home and I don't think Death Stranding would sink in the same way during my home move - it'd be better if I waited till I was in the right mood for it. LM3 will be simple enough and I'll need simple around that time.

JayMoyles wrote:

In other news, I've been playing a bit of Dragon Quest...

JayMoyles wrote:

- the first one!

I suppose I can see the appeal of a pint-sized JRPG, but I will never understand the general fondness for playing the creaky versions over the more modern ones. At least it hasn't put you off the series I suppose. Will you go through all XI in order then?

I was speaking to Jas and Andy about this during a Monster Hunting session as Jas compared to a history lesson, which I think is pretty apt. There's so much here that would have been considered revolutionary for its time and seeing the groundwork for all the JRPGs that followed this is neat indeed.

If anything, it's endeared me to the series more because I love the character and enemy designs and I'm looking forward to more modern JRPG trappings popping up in later releases. I don't know if I'll play all eleven games - DQX is literally impossible for me as it's a Japan only MMO and I'm concerned about the price of some of the DS remakes (V shows up as £80 on CEX!), but I'll play through the original three that are readily available on Switch first. After that, I'll probably jump ahead to DQXI unless the later titles start getting rereleased on Switch too.

I'd love the idea of making the Switch a Dragon Quest machine, much like we were describing the 3DS as a Pokémon/Ace Attorney/Monster Hunter machine.

Tell Andy to get back on the forum regularly, it's been ages.

Forgot about X, but fair enough there!  I suppose it might well give you a sense of appreciation for XI when you reach it that I don't have, but that does have to be weighed up again whether there are other games that I'd rather be spending my time on, and I guess it's that I don't understand (software droughts aside). I do understand the 'history lesson' aspect: again, it's all about opportunity costs for me.

I hear that DQII is meant to be a bit meh. Something to bear in mind.

Balladeer wrote:

I suppose I can see the appeal of a pint-sized JRPG, but I will never understand the general fondness for playing the creaky versions over the more modern ones.

It's like going to a museum, or watching a history documentary, innit.

Jimbob wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

I suppose I can see the appeal of a pint-sized JRPG, but I will never understand the general fondness for playing the creaky versions over the more modern ones.

It's like going to a museum, or watching a history documentary, innit.

I'd be more open to playing JRPGs if they lasted a few hours and had skippable cutscenes. It's the sheer amount of bollocks that you've got to put up with that just makes me tune out of these sort of games. 

Off-topic, but I just typed 'Dragon Quest DS' into CEX's search engine, and I've got five of those eight games. 

Skipping cutscenes in a JRPG you'd be missing one of the main things about the genre, story though. Unless it's Pokémon where it's too become the very best.

Especially a turn-based one. Without a good plot a pure turn-based JRPG really is just watching numbers go up, which is fine if you've formed emotional attachments to the numbers in some way (e.g. Pokémon) and seems more like work than fun otherwise.

Balladeer wrote:

I hear that DQII is meant to be a bit meh.  Something to bear in mind.

I've heard as much too. It would somewhat fitting if I end up bouncing off both FFII and DQII.

On a fun note, my brother apparently owns DQIX and I had no idea that he owned it, so that'll save me some time and money.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Off-topic, but I just typed 'Dragon Quest DS' into CEX's search engine, and I've got five of those eight games. 

If you're not planning to sell those on yourself or keep them for your collection - or play them, but I figured that'd be a long shot - I'd be interested in some of those games in the near future.

I totally get what Cappa is saying, JRPG's are the one genre that really has a problem with padding out the content rather than just getting to the point. I'd also be willing to try more if they were around 15-20 hours long.

It's all about pacing I've played likes of Persona 5 which didn't feel almost 100hrs then likes of Ni No Kuni 2 those 8hrs I did play felt like a slog.

Yeah it is a pacing issue and there will be ones that get it right like in your example but my point was that the genre often doesn't get that pacing right.

I like the genre and even I would have to agree that they frequently stuff the pacing, especially near the start.  That said, I really don't see what you're playing a purely turn-based JRPG for if it isn't the plot.  The aesthetics perhaps? Also, I love digging into the odd 100h-plus monster.  DQXI has its hooks in good.

JayMoyles wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Off-topic, but I just typed 'Dragon Quest DS' into CEX's search engine, and I've got five of those eight games. 

If you're not planning to sell those on yourself or keep them for your collection - or play them, but I figured that'd be a long shot - I'd be interested in some of those games in the near future.

I'll bear that in mind. The ones I have are Dragon Quest IX, Sentinels Of The Starry, Dragon Quest VII: Fragments Of The Forgotten Past, Dragon Quest 5: Hands Of The Heavenly and Dragon Quest Monsters 1 and 2. 

The_Jaster wrote:

I totally get what Cappa is saying, JRPG's are the one genre that really has a problem with padding out the content rather than just getting to the point. I'd also be willing to try more if they were around 15-20 hours long.  

That's a big part of Pokemon's appeal for me - they're usually around 20-25 hours long, and they're different enough from the other types of games that I play. It's good to play a Pokemon game every couple of years, breaks things up a bit. 

Balladeer wrote:

I like the genre and even I would have to agree that they frequently stuff the pacing, especially near the start.  That said, I really don't see what you're playing a purely turn-based JRPG for if it isn't the plot.  Also, I love digging into the odd 100h-plus monster.  DQXI has its hooks in good.

Think of all the absolutely amazing games you could play in a hundred hours.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

That's a big part of Pokemon's appeal for me - they're usually around 20-25 hours long, and they're different enough from the other types of games that I play. It's good to play a Pokemon game every couple of years, breaks things up a bit.

Then from what I know for those that crave more it still has post credits stuff, right? So that play time I imagine can go up to the 100+ hour mark but that's a decision clearly made by the person playing & not one thrust upon them by poor pacing etc.

Pokemon does have a story, and often a good one, its just less over the top and bollocks than a lot of JRPGs.
I can forgive games with turn-based battling if the player is in a kind of commander role - hence Pokemon and Fire Emblem making sense to me. When I'm selecting attacks from a list and it's supposed to represent my own actual self, it feels dumb.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

That's a big part of Pokemon's appeal for me - they're usually around 20-25 hours long

The_Jaster wrote:

Then from what I know for those that crave more it still has post credits stuff, right? So that play time I imagine can go up to the 100+ hour mark but that's a decision clearly made by the person playing & not one thrust upon them by poor pacing etc.

Pretty much, yeah. There will be some deliberate post-game stuff, maybe a little epilogue story or a special battle challenge or something like that. Then there's collecting all the Pokemon and completing the pokedex - which can get ridiculous if you want special forms and different coloured shiny variants. Finally, there's competitive PVP stuff, which can involve breeding and training Pokemon very deliberately to make them as viable as possible.

As a kid I used to play my Pokemon games for insane numbers of hours. Then I went through a phase where they were just one among a big list of games I wanted to play. Now, I'm kind of going back - I've gotten pretty obsessed again, and I'm less interested in playing every single new release and more willing to put time into my personal favourites.

I kind of agree on the turn-based stuff.  I think there's very little excuse for a pure turn-based system, originally presumably a limitation of the hardware, in this day and age apart from where it does something special.  I'd include Pokémon's monster variety and Octopath's shields system in that.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Think of all the absolutely amazing games you could play in a hundred hours.

And think about all the sweets you could eat while you're wasting your time on a roast dinner!  I’ve just whizzed through UGG and SWH and wanted something chunkier to go alongside. Balance is good.

Yeah, Pokemon does normally have a decent enough story but would still make sense if you skipped all the cutscenes as It's easy to understand win the league.

Imagine skipping Fire Emblem Three Houses, especially my playthrough, I'd be like why am I siding with this person etc

We talked about Tangle Tower not so long ago: well, it came out yesterday! I'll be playing it with The Lady in due course. I'm really quite excited for it after the previous game, and it's interesting that they've brought Sally back. Clearly a fan favourite character... (She was alluring, basically. Less so now.)

I may play that myself via Apple Arcade and have a bit of an AA day tomorrow unless I get distracted by something else.

Is it necessary to play the previous game or could I jump straight in on Switch?

The NL review suggests the latter, but it's worth playing the first one! I enjoyed it.

masofdas wrote:

I may play that myself via Apple Arcade and have a bit of an AA day tomorrow unless I get distracted by something else.

AA could absolutely mean Ace Attorney here given the type of game we're talking about. Got to make your acronyms unambiguous Mas. (By the way, an Ace Attorney day sounds tremendous. Or, er, aas aan aaside, aan Ace Attorney aafternoon aappears aamazing.)