Yeah, I am reading that in the reviews. I guess it’s not always better to revisit great games, especially RPG’s.
I still can’t believe how much I disliked FFX-2.
I wish the PS2 had more Tales games. I see that we didn’t even get Rebirth in this country.
I hear Legendia is really kind of bad. Random battles and so forth.
Anyone play it?
Hi; sorry I missed your followup question. Yeah, I thought it was okay; although it doesn’t stack up to the original Tales of Symphonia, it does have its moments. It was nice to see the original ToS characters again, even if their involvement in the gameplay was rather limited. I thought the main characters had some interesting backstory, but the antagonists were pretty one-dimensional. The new monster-collecting mechanic was kind of fun, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.
You know, I am trying, but I can’t think of a single closely tied direct sequel to a good RPG that was…equally good.
The closest I can come is Shadow Hearts 2, which was actually significantly BETTER than the original by all reports (I uh…sortof skipped the first game.) Otherwise… well, I guess Ultima 5 was an improved game than 4, and was a direct sequel, and fairly closely tied (compared to a lot of other Ultima games, where a heck of a long time and many changes occured between games.)
The original (not online) Phantasy Star games (except 3) were direct sequels, and good, but were set 1000 years apart. Each, so the only thing they really shared was history.
FFX2 is… well, a failure in my mind. So is the additonal “chapter” of Persona 3 offered in FES, simply because it was a big grindy mess without most of the mechanics that made P3 fun.
Persona 4 is apparently “same world” as P3, but you’d pretty much never know it.
Can anyone name a successful return to a popular RPG? I’m looking for same world, chronologically (and geographically, if it wasn’t a world spanning game) close, and featuring at least some of the same characters. Anyone got one?
Fallout 2. It was superior in almost every way to the first one in gameplay.
The first one had a better cohesive plot and atmosphere, however.
Lunar 2. Chronologically, it isn’t possible to have most of the original characters come back because it takes place much later, but there are some surprise cameos and a lot of characters have strong ties to the originals.
Most of the characters weren’t quite as endearing to me, but I still have favorites.
And, uh, anyone who has played both knows why a squealing teenage fangirl would love it. I never actually finished Lunar 2, it ran out of steam for me after a certain point. cough
That’s…close, I guess, though it’s easy to score technical improvements on a newer game. How closely tied to the original game WAS Fallout 2? I admit, I played through the first one (Almost. I got fed up at the end.) but never got on with the second one.
You were the grandson or great-grandson (I forget which) of the original Vault Dweller from the first game. The original took place in Southern California. The sequel takes place a bit North of there. Tandi returns. So does Harold (Harold also shows up in FO3).
Dogmeat makes a cameo in a random encounter.
And by improvements I’m not talking technical improvements. The inventory management is improved, you can push your NPC’s out of the way so they don’t trap you, the weapon selection is greatly expanded, the karma system is more advanced, there is no level cap, the game is 50% bigger, etc. All of that could have been accomplished in the first game, it didn’t require two years more advanced technology to pull off.
My main complaint is it doesn’t pull you in like the first one did.
Hee.
This is actually exactly what I meant by “technical” improvements. I didn’t mean like, shinier graphics or something. I meant improvement to the game systems. Basically what you have here is the result of a massive “beta test” in Fallout 1, where they can then go back and look and say “Crap. Inventory management was bad, NPCs got in the way, and the karma system was pretty simplistic!” Those are the easy kind of things to spot and fix in a sequel.
The intangibles are always was the hardest part. =/
Baldur’s Gate 2?
I’d say **Wizardy 8 **was the only really good Wizardry game and it did resolve the Dark Savant storyline.
Right, Persona 4 technically takes place in the same world as P3, but it is unrelated in every other way.
Anyone play FF12 Revenant Wings? It’s a true sequel, I think.
Lufia II was better than the first by miles. It’s probably the best RPG on the SNES.
Sorry about missing this thread earlier.
Tales of Symphonia 2 has some good things and a lot of bad things. For me, the good outweighed the bad, but that is not most people’s experience.
Good:
Same great gameplay as the first with some new moves/actions
Monsters! (this is a negative for most, but I had lots of fun with it). They can join your group, level, and evolve into new monsters with different abilities.
Bad:
Only new characters gain experience, any characters from the first game join at a fixed level. If they leave and come back, they’ll progress. This caused me to ignore them completely in favor of new characters and monsters.
Average story.
And the biggest problem - the absolute most whiny main character ever. There are spoil-ly plot reasons for this, but he still was the single most aggravating character I’ve had the displeasure of controlling.
So the new characters are NPC that briefly join the team? That’s a disappointment.
I thought it was a true sequel.
The game wants you to focus on the new characters. The original characters from the previous game are guests. More than NPCs because you can play them in battle, but they don’t level or gain new skills when they’re with you. If they leave and then come back, they all of sudden remember things they could do in the previous game.
It is more like a spin-off and the original characters show up from time to time as “Special Guest Star.” They have almost no character arc at all. Sometimes they drive the plot, but any growth is from the new characters.
Ignorance again, but was Baldur’s Gate 2 connected to the original in any way? I mean, aside from being set in the same world?
I understand what they were trying to do with this, but it still annoys me, since it’s pretty obvious that for many, many people, re-meeting old ‘friends’ (characters) was a large part of why they were interested in the game.
I kinda feel like the “Monster-mon” portion of the game is a cop out too - this is a decent mechanism in a game where it’s either entirely the focus (Pokemon) or in a game with a large number of character slots, (Shining Force, La Pucelle Tactics). In a game like this, it just reeks of “we were too lazy to design real characters to flesh out the party.” =/
And Mass Effect 2 could be considered a successful sequel, but it’s not really a “return” in that the ME world was conceived as a multi-game story arc from the beginnning. (Though, the first one had enough of a resolved ending that had it bombed in sales, they probably could have stopped right there.)
It’s a direct continuation, unless I’ve misremembered.
Yes, it is really a true sequel, since they don’t even give a mini-recap at all. You’d be lost without having finished XII.
Spoiler for what I’m talking about (for both XII and RW):
Larsa shows up on airship. Basch, in full Magister armor except for the helm which he’s holding, is with him and starts talking. His speech bubble is labeled ‘Basch’. Absolutely no elaboration at all.
If you actually liked Vaan and Penelo, you’ll love Revenant Wings. If you’re a whore for Archades like me, you’ll spend the entire game gouging your eyes out.
At the time RW came out, FF Tactics Advance 2 was getting a lot of hype. I knew Al-Cid from XII was going to cameo in one of them, but mistakenly thought RW, and spent way too much time on the game trying to find him only to find out he was in Tactics Advance 2.
I thought I’d revisit this thread (since most of the posters seem to still be around) since today is the Japanese release of Xillia. I want this game so much. The story concept, the art style, the new battle mechanics, everything looks amazing. Milla has to coolest Tales character I’ve ever heard the concept for. Sadly, no localization has been announced, and we had to wait about two years for Graces to be announced for localization, and then wait another year on top of that (though to be fair, we only had to wait like, three months after the release of Graces f in Japan, it’s just after the Wii version there was no word).
I’m importing it. Sadly, my Japanese isn’t the best. Since my grammar is pretty good, I should be able to muddle through the text balloons with a dictionary and some quality time, but I could barely understand any of the trailer, since I’m so limited by vocabulary.
But the Openings are just so captivating.
I’m excited for Xillia, but not so excited I’m going to try to play it in Japanese. At the very least, I’m going to wait for someone to type up some sort of translation or something. (Oh, yeah, and I’ll have to get a PS3 first. Nice of them to cut the price for me though.)
I suspect very strongly that we will not see anything regarding Xillia localization until after the numbers from Graces F have come in. The way I see it, ToGF is the U.S. Tales’ fans last chance to put their money where their mouth is in terms of buying a localized Tales game. If it can’t get to AT LEAST Tales of the Abyss levels of sales, then we’re basically never going to see a localized Tales game again. If, on the other hand, the Internet (and all the people who post on like, every Namco related thread ever saying “WTF, Where’s my Tales?”) walks the walk instead of just talking the talk and ToGF actually SELLS, (Sorry guys, no more excuses. No more “I don’t have that console.” No nothing. Buy it.) then I think a Xillia localization won’t be long in coming.
I like what I’ve seen of Xillia - though Jude may be the girliest Tales protagonist I’ve ever seen, that amuses me. I WANT to like Milla, and she seems cool, but I’m having a hard time getting past her default outfit. -_- Her Stahn costume that pre-order people get is so much better. =/
Really though, I’m carefully distancing myself from this game right now, because I have no faith that people are actually going to step up to the plate for Graces F.