/v/ - HARMONY

Ogre Battle 64

Final Fantasy Tactics

Dragon Quest V

>>14366360

>you get to nuke humanity

Not sad at all.

>>14365942

>Isn't FFT pretty much for kids or really light-hearted or some shit?

You see this guy? He's one of your main allies in the first act. He's fully convinced that commoners are pieces of trash that only serve as disposable bags of meat to do the nobles' bidding, and laughs at them for wanting the most basic of human rights. He even kills your best friend's sister because she was commoner trash who simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he even brags about it to him on his face in the whole fight.

He wasn't the worst guy in the whole game by the slightest.

>>14365888

>>14366590

Seconding Koudelka, though it's kind of a hit or miss game in terms of gameplay. Shadow Hearts series (as mentioned by >>14366268 ) are sequels to it within the same world and chronology. Series had its niche as being darker, historical fantasy JRPGs (with Koudelka being a gothic horror/RPG hybrid), but could also just be fucking weird at times; as the series went on, the mechanics got more refined, but the ratio of dark-to-quirk skewed more and more heavily in the favor of quirk.

not really though

>entire world is thousands of years post-apocalypse

>no one knows what happens

>remnants of civilization are terrifying bio-weapons repurposed by an empire seeking to control everything

>rebellion against that empire is eliminated just as the main character is showing interest in joining

>empire destroys the only city on the continent, wiping away hundreds of people

>empires most terrifying weapon gets infected by an engineered bio-weapon virus and goes on a rampage killing thousands in the Empire and anyone else in its path

>world is being threatened with extinction by hundreds of ominous towers

>can only stop one

>get lost in the 6th dimension while the rest of the world is pretty much going to go extinct

>at least you saved your waifu who loves you and is going to search the earth endlessly for you

>>14366268

>that kid in class said the thing you were going to say before you got a chance to and now you have nothing to contribute

>>14375673

Could always just vouch for someone's recommendation or try to strike up more of a tangent about it.

It's funny though, apparently SH1's reception in Japan was that it was too dark, too scary, and the monster designs too bizarre compared to the standard JRPG setup (worth noting that even in Japan, the game had the equivalent of an M rating with that red triangle warning on the cover, so it's not like it was some supposedly kid friendly game), which the developers at Sacnoth took as compliments. Unfortunately, their publisher, Aruze, didn't see that as something to be happy about. Still not sure why a pachislot loving publisher like them deigned to pick up such a niche series, other than "former square devs = square tier sales" logic.

>>14378229

It's a great game in what I consider to be a great series, though the first (Koudelka) and final (Shadow Hearts: From the New World) games are somewhat iffy amongst fans. Series is unfortunately a tad expensive these days (especially the first two games), and has never had a digital rerelease here in the west (and reprints have only helped so much). I got lucky and didn't have to pay too much for mine.

And yeah, Yuri is a great protagonist. Lovable jackass, pervert, and all around asskicker of demons and horrors of the beyond alike, who is able to subjugate the souls of various monsters and fuse his soul with theirs to shapeshift in battle.

>Shame the japs didn't like it.

It's not so much that they didn't like it, more that they didn't expect it (albeit the game is a chronological sequel in the same world as Koudelka was despite the different game title, so I'm not sure why they wouldn't expect more dark, gory, fucked up shit). Aruze though asked Sacnoth what the fuck they thought they were doing with their funding, and told them to make more normal games. So they toned down the darkness a bit and made up for it in getting really fucking weird, keeping the series niche. They even at some point ragged on their publisher in game, nipping at the hand that fed them. It's honestly a bit surprising it took four games (three of which under Aruze as publisher) before Aruze had enough and dissolved the team.

Just discovered they did wind up making a Shadow Hearts Covenant pachinko down the line. Doesn't surprise me (again, Aruze mainly does pachislot shit anyhow), but I'm still disappointed.

>>14378229

>>14378388

Not sure why I had do not bump on.

>The boxart they used on the NA version didn't really grab me but I saw this game in plenty of stores and had plenty of opportunities to buy it.

That game got screwed over a fair bit, both in Japan and west. The release timing wasn't real good in either region, being a month prior to FFX in Japan and WEEK prior in NA, so most RPG enthusiasts with PS2s were more willing to give Square their money than a company that had produced a game critics had treated rather harshly prior. And while the western box art is a mishmash of elements in a rather silly looking way, the Japanese art just has the game's logo, a mature content warning, and the Judgment Ring in the background on the front (and while player's will become very, very familiar with the Ring and it's certainly got better style to it, there's no indication on the front as to what the game might even be about, for better or worse). So it mostly got passed over here, despite some mixed praise in review (IGN were fuckers though, which I suppose is to be expected), and I've been left wondering if Aruze and Midway were just retarded to release it that close to a heavily anticipated Square title, or if Square decided to squash it by choosing to release that close in both regions. Though to my knowledge is did eventually do well enough in Japan to warrant a PS2 the BEST version, and Covenant even managed a (Japan only) Director's Cut under the PS2 the BEST line as well, so as a series it was popular enough out there, just perhaps not as big as it could have been, given comments from the developers about it competing badly against "bigger fish".

Copies of Koudelka are still hard to come by pricy to boot (and honestly it has awful load times played from disc, so if you do play it, play it digitally), and for a while SH1 was rather hard to find and got pricy once demand started getting up there as knowledge slowly spread. Midway did something awesome, and printed a whole new batch of SH1 as the preorder bonus for Shadow Hearts: Covenant out here (Covenant being a chronological sequel, things make more sense and have a lot more weight if you've played the first prior), but even now it's still hard to find SH1 (because Covenant didn't initially sell that well either, thus not a big bonus print for SH1), let alone at a price under $45 where I live.