RPG Cast – Episode 606: “I Have Digimon Poop to Clean Up”
Kelley Ryan starts a new studio to make the darkest, hardest game ever. Josh explains why everyone hates JRPGs. And Chris wonders if he can use pencils as healing items.
Question of the Week
Do you like Star Ocean? What’s your favorite entry?
Check out the show notes here!
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QOTW: My feelings are general positive regarding Star Ocean; there’s only been one entry I truly despised.
Star Ocean: Good
Star Ocean 2: Fantastic
Star Ocean Till the End of Time: Great
Star Ocean The Last Hope: Terrible
Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness: Enjoyably meh…
So we’re on our upward trend, hopefully. Personally, I’m hoping they do something about their character models, because the main protagonist in that trailer for The Divine Force looked like someone put a baby’s head on an adult’s body.
As a Tales fan, I felt like leaving another feedback as a counterpoint to Kelley’s opinions on Tales of Arise; having just beaten it myself last week.
Overall, I thought it was okay and sits in the mid to lower mid tier of Tales games. I found the storytelling to be one of the worst in the series. It has all the nuance and intrigue of a sledge hammer while trying to invoke themes of better told entries (like Symphonia with it’s two worlds vying for the other’s energy and enslaving the populace of the other). Every chapter is the same:
“This place has a form of slavery”
“It’s bad”
Alphen then proceeds to give upwards of 12 hero speeches
Beat villain, chapter ends, rinse/repeat.
Most of the characters had some good development and arcs, though.
And while I generally love the Tales series for it’s skits, Arise didn’t pace them out very well. I’d enter new areas and there’d be 3-5 back to back. Sure, I didn’t have to push the button to play them, but I’m not running around with that button prompt sitting on the bottom corner of my screen!
On the plus side, it has the most fun combat ever in a Tales game. If I were ranking Tales games based solely on combat, Arise would be number 1. Played it on Normal and it was really well balanced in the difficulty department; just the right amount of challenge (unlike Berseria, which I otherwise loved, where I had to turn the difficulty up to Hard to not feel like I was flying through the game with ridiculous ease). And also the most gorgeous entry in the series, hands down!
So it sort of balanced itself out, imo, to be an okay entry in the Tales series.
This episode had some hilarious bits. Such a funny image in my head of Kelly (or the Digimon game protag) wiping AngelWomon’s ass…some things about the Digimon franchise never really clicked with me some how. This goes into that list I’m afraid 😅
And Chris’ rant about difficulty in those western pen and paper style RPGs. I had to laugh at that as well.
Question of the week. Star Ocean seems to me a mid tier mediocre series at best.
I’ve played the first 2 games on psp and enjoyed them mostly but really can’t think of anything that is memorable from them. I have the other games in my backlog but don’t know when I’ll get around to them. The new trailer seems pretty rough…very uninspired dated looking character design and it looks like a 360 or PS3 game. I think this next game has to be make or break for the series. You could maybe argue in the same way as Tales of Arise was a make or break game after a few weak entries in the Tales series back to back.
My favorite game will always be Star ocean 2, because it is the reason why I bought a PS1. I was extremely surprised when I heard about Divine Force, since I figured the last game had killed any chance if a new one. Hopefully this will bring the series back from the brink.
I will say that the new male protagonist looks like a WWE wrestler.