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Episode 486: Rejecting Other Green Dinosaurs

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, and Guillaume Veillette - July 24, 2016, 4:11 pm EDT
Total comments: 6

Greg is not a man willing to negotiate on the purity of his Yoshi experience.

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Jon took the week off to perfect his floating Vita case, so your RFN experience this week is limited to Gui, Greg, and James. Nintendo blessed us by releasing the demo for Blast Ball the day of recording, so all three panelists have thoughts on this competitive soccer-shooter side-game to Change.org Presents: Not My Metroid. Greg has thoughts on SNES Shooting Gallery Wild Guns; coincidentally, Natsume has a recently-announced remake on the way. Guillaume has an update on Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and it sounds like he intends to let Dracula win. Guillaume is the most irresponsible vampire hunter. He also looks at Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll, an NES fighting game recently released on Wii U Virtual Console. He and James then team up to give an unplanned update on Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. I'm sorry. I promise this is the last time.

After the break, it's time for Listener Mail. Topics this week include: being a "daddy" named James Jones, getting into Pokémon after Pokémon Go, casting a Shiek game, and our gaming influences. You can tell us how Miitomo has lead to your impending divorce by sending us an email.

This episode was edited by Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Bluffs Custom Music's SoundCloud. The new Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See more of his work at his website

This episode's ending music is Rainbow Road (N64) Theme from Mario Kart 8. This ending was requested by Connell. All rights reserved by Nintendo.

Talkback

TOPHATANT123July 24, 2016

Since it's a crossover Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE will have been meant to appeal to beginners, which is why I made sure to play on hard. While even at hard I am not finding the same amount of challenge as Shin Megami Tensei, it does require thought especially at the bosses. The SP gauge is usually the key to turning the tide with bosses and you will be punished if you become complacent using buffs and debuffs. You are free to switch characters without penalty but if that character is knocked out you cannot get that spot back with out reviving them.

The biggest fault I find in the battle system is that you are not punished enough for using group attacks like Ma-suffix, usually in Shin Megami Tensei you want to aim for a balance between group hitters and precision strikes in your party so that you are prepared for any encounter. Group hitters should be devastating but if used against an enemy that nulls, drains, or reflects you usually end up forfeiting the or having the amount of turns in press turn cut. In TMS#FE no such risk reward exists outside of one costing slightly more EP which is in abundance. I would have had it so that if you trigger more than one enemies weakness you should have more than one session or an extra long session string of attacks. This way there is not a clear upgrade path and you need to strike a balance within your team between different types of group and single attacks.

Gui

I feel that Abram's quest is meant to be hard so you can't use potions to so easily brute force the boss encounters. still, I can offer a couple of tips on vanquishing Mandragoras.

The first one is if you've made enough progress, you should be employing the Nitesco Glyph, which does fire and light attribute damage. if you're at the point of having Nitesco, you should also employ Rapidus Fio, which increases your movement speed in a very significant way and also makes the task of farming the roots much easier.

if you are at the point of the game where you first encounter the mandragora enemy, it would be much easier for you to employ Ignis and Sapiens Fio. I imagine ignis was easily acquired via the demons, but in the case of Sapiens fio, getting it at oblivion ridge isn't a very easy task, and requires smart use of the jump-kick that you get from the double jump. to perform a jump kick, double jump, then hold down and the direction you want to kick in while hitting the jump button. if you successfully connect with a fleaman or a albatross, you'll bounce up and be able to jump kick again, hopefully getting you up to the ledge where Sapiens Fio resides.

if you're STILL having trouble doing enough damage after raising your intelligence and shooting with Ignis, I'd also suggest trying to find the Red Drops Candy, which will raise your fire attribute by quite a bit. failing that there is a couple of good ways to grind attribute points, but I won't get into that here because I feel grinding for attribute points would be a further weaponization Gui would employ against the game.


I think you should wait to do that side quest if you're having trouble and having to spam glyph unions. Actually, Glyph Unions are the thing I have a lot of issue with in this game, as it's VERY easy to break the game by spamming them at bosses... especially after you have Vol Umbra + Vol Luminatio, Nitesco + any weapon Glyph, or Vol Grando glyph unions.

EnnerJuly 25, 2016

It's hard to tell whether reviews got the disc or digital copies of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Jeff Gerstmann on Giant Bomb mentioned having a disc copy, but didn't detail whether it was a Nintendo-provided copy or a personal copy. Also, I think the Giant Bomb quick look of the game done by Giant Bomb East is a disc version of the game since I think the load times were a bit long. I recall Giant Bomb getting the disc version of Xenoblade Chronicles X, and that might apply to other outlets as well.


So... there's a chance that some reviewers got the disc copy of the game and didn't mind the load times as they played through it. I have yet to read a review taking issue with the out-and-back-in nature of TMS#FE's pacing. Which, by the way, will happen again in Chapter Four. So you have that to look forward to, James.


As for someone's first Pokemon game, I would say XY. However Sun and Moon is coming out soon, and those games might have a better ramp for beginners.


Good show.

The review copy NWR got for TMS was a disc.

Edit: Not only was Pokémon RBY the only GB VC release this year that didn't involve Super Nintendo games, it was the first GB/GBC release in a calendar year for North America.

azekeJuly 25, 2016

You had an idea of RTS-like game where you try to defeat Ganon using armies.

There is a mod Total War game called Hyrule: Total War which does more or less that.

nickmitchJuly 27, 2016

I think the best Pokemon game to get back into the series is Black 2/White 2.  That game holds your hand a good bit and contains enough older Pokemon for an estranged fan to enjoy.  I think those two more than the other games tell you, "Hey, this gym uses ___ type. You can beat that with ___ type Pokemon.  There's some in the tall grass over there!  Go catch one!".  I'm pretty sure it literally does that in one place.

Honestly, HG/SS still retains the harsh pacing of the originals, so I wouldn't recommend that because it's easy to give up early on.  And the newer games add mega evolution and fairies which may overcomplicate a bit.

I think the Gen I remakes for GBA would be kinda hard to find, and the originals are so far from modern, upgrading would still be intimidating.  B2W2 provides a good balance.

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