What Game Did You Love When You First Played It but Can't Play Anymore?

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Jay said:
WTF
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He's technically incorrect. You simply had a much higher chance of getting that weapon from a certain chest if you didn't open these specific chests, due to how the RNG was configured. However, you could still get it the old fashioned way... which involved getting it at an extremely low rate from a different chest in the secret dungeon.

It was also completely overrated. There were better, easier weapons to get.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Interestingly, the Zodiac Spear is basically a artful Roman Legionaire's spear, which means the "Zodiac Spear" name is probably hiding the fact that it's the Lance of Longinus/Holy Spear/Spear of Victory/ etc.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

AshburnerX said:
He's technically incorrect. You simply had a much higher chance of getting that weapon from a certain chest if you didn't open these specific chests, due to how the RNG was configured. However, you could still get it the old fashioned way... which involved getting it at an extremely low rate from a different chest in the secret dungeon.

It was also completely overrated. There were better, easier weapons to get.
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What? Zodiac Spear was the highest attack power weapon in the game, if you were building someone as a physical DPS it was easily the best weapon. The other high-AP weapons were gated behind Hunts and optional bosses, some of which could take literal hours to beat. Zodiac could be picked up fairly early, too, as long as you're good at dodging fights. Any other weapon that remotely compared to it was going to require a lot more effort than "hey don't open that," stupid as the idea of linking chests was.

The Zodiac Spear (until the FF12 re-release) would not appear in the extra dungeon if you looted these other chests. The chests at Phon Coast, like the wiki link Frank provided says, correspond to the chests in the extra dungeon.

e: Yeah flipping through my old player's guide for FF12, the best 2hand swords would require either good luck while stealing/farming from monsters, clearing out all the Zodiac bosses, and/or clearing the majority of Special Hunts. The swords have a lower attack power than the spear anyway, and use/check against the same stats.
 
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AshburnerX

AshburnerX

CynicismKills said:
The Zodiac Spear (until the FF12 re-release) would not appear in the extra dungeon if you looted these other chests. The chests at Phon Coast, like the wiki link Frank provided says, correspond to the chests in the extra dungeon.
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From the wiki:

A second Zodiac Spear can be obtained in an alternative site, the Henne Mines' Phase 2 Dig. Even if the mentioned forbidden chests named in the above chart are opened, the spear is still obtainable here. However, to unlock the site, at least 10 Espers must be acquired, and the Mindflayer Hunt completed. The player must speak to Geomancer Yugelu in Jahara to unlock this site, reachable via the Ore Separation.
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So you could, in fact, get the spear this way if you wanted. It's just that you only had a 10% chance getting the chest to spawn each run, a 10% chance of it having an item, and only a 1% chance of it having the Spear (and only with a Diamond Armlet equipped on the party leader). And you really don't need it at that point in the game.

As for better weapons... Masamune has a natural 40% combo rate. Putting on a Genji Glove makes that 70%. This makes it defacto better at high levels where getting more hits out is more important than the damage of the weapon because everyone is hitting for max damage anyway.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Beating 10 Espers is kind of a chore compared to just checking what chests to skip, though. Some of those later ones were pretty brutal if I remember right.

That is true about the katanas though, but by the time I'd gotten to the endgame I think I was so tired of farming and starting up sidequests I think I just went with the spear instead. I usually had control of my tank-build character, so whoever did my physical DPS just did his own thing with whatever Gambits I slapped on them.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

CynicismKills said:
Beating 10 Espers is kind of a chore compared to just checking what chests to skip, though. Some of those later ones were pretty brutal if I remember right.
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I wouldn't call it a chore... I mean, why WOULDN'T you fight them? They are some of the most iconic fights in the game and it's how you unlocked new summons.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

AshburnerX said:
I wouldn't call it a chore... I mean, why WOULDN'T you fight them? They are some of the most iconic fights in the game and it's how you unlocked new summons.
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I know at least one of them had some weird secret to unlocking them, something to do with taking paths a certain way in a dungeon in order to open the way to them. I called it a chore mainly because the effort to fight them all compared to how useful they were to finishing the game was pretty staggering. Granted, the final bosses were all pushovers. Most of the postgame/sidequest strategies didn't really need them, either, those all came down to Bubble/Reverse/Decoy and proper Gambit setup.

In terms of iconic you're right, though, and the design work on them was easily some of the best in the game.

Honestly thinking about it I'd probably put FFXII in the realm of games I like, but might not play again. It's got what feels like a really weird difficulty curve in that early game is easy, midgame gets pretty difficult, and endgame's pretty easy.
 
Null

Null

Yeah, you get near the endgame, and everything's fairly easy... and then you make the mistake of going to the Subterra, at which point your entire party gets gangraped by giant toads. Or that mine section with the level 99 critters.
 
Siska

Siska

Thunderscape. Was my favorite RPG. I bought it a few months before I got Elder Scrolls and I actually liked it better. However 20 years later on a modern high resolution large screen the graphics are a brownish grey pixelated mess. Really hard to make things out. Also sound effects are awful. Badass music though!
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Siska said:
Thunderscape. Was my favorite RPG. I bought it a few months before I got Elder Scrolls and I actually liked it better. However 20 years later on a modern high resolution large screen the graphics are a brownish grey pixelated mess. Really hard to make things out. Also sound effects are awful. Badass music though!
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Huh. That looks and sounds a lot like Ultima Underworld, which was my pre-Elder Scrolls ES game. Every once in a while I still break it out with dosbox, even though the pixels are now as big as my fingernails.
 
Siska

Siska

GasBandit said:
Huh. That looks and sounds a lot like Ultima Underworld, which was my pre-Elder Scrolls ES game. Every once in a while I still break it out with dosbox, even though the pixels are now as big as my fingernails.
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I think it's on GOG if you want to try it. It's mostly dungeon crawling. Turnbased combat as you can see in the vidoe. Linear story as in you complete one area and then have no reason to go back, ever. A lot of character and skill leveling focus. I recommend reading the manual for skills.Takes place in the world of Aden. Another game, Etromorph: Plague of the Darkfall., also took place in Aden but other then that they have nothing in common.
 
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TNM

TNM

MUDs, specifically Medieva. Back in the days of dial-up and poor graphic games there was an alternative - text games!
 
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