I've noticed a recurring pattern among PS2 JRPGs that receive massive universal praise and would be FANTASTIC games except for the fact that they all have flaws in the same part of the game -the combat system- which drag them down. How far they get dragged down varies from game to game:
Persona 3 FES - fantastic -> great
Odin Sphere - fantastic -> really good
Dragon Quest VIII - fantastic -> really good
Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time - fantastic -> completely ruined
Persona 3 FES: The ally AI is, in some regards, REALLY GOOD- allies will learn from ineffective attacks so they never deliberately use them once they've seen that they're useless and if you scan an enemy they will actually learn from the scan without even needing to experiment. Unfortunately, in a game where combat features a massive emphasis on taking advantage of the 'One More' system where you knock enemies down to gain turn advantage, the fact that the AI is COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of grasping the nuances of this strategy makes it more of a hindrance than a help and there is NO option to manually control your party like there is in, say, EVERY OTHER party-based JRPG ever made. Allies are also completely retarded with regard to using items- Yukari, who comes with a built in Charm-healing spell will -get this- NOT USE IT WHEN SOMEONE GETS CHARMED and NO ally can use any status-healing item at all. They're also conditioned so they conjure up a single Medical Powder (second weakest healing item) and an infinite supply of Medicines (weakest healing item) if they don't have a healing spell or are running low on MP, even if you have an entire bag full of Beads (full-healing item). This is terrible considering that you get a game over if the main character goes down and, if he is disabled by a status condition, you're SCREWED until it wears off naturally. Fortunately Persona 4 fixed the control issue and Persona 3 is so great in so many other areas outside of combat that it can be excused.
Odin Sphere: The character sprites are SO lovingly animated and detailed that they can't interrupt their animation routines. What does this mean? MASSIVELY unresponsive controls. This wouldn't be so much a problem if the enemy wasn't so bullshit, regularly shrugging off hitstun and unavoidably counterattacking in the middle of your combo (assuming you were able to hitstun them at all) and doing so much damage that it's ridiculous- I was particularly annoyed when I realized that a WASP had stung me for 1/6 of my maximum HP. The game IS extremely frustrating in places (and unlike Persona has virtually NO gameplay outside of the combat) but is one of the few games where the story is so good that I can forgive it. Besides, frustration aside the combat still remains somehow fun. Except in Titania. Fuck Titania.
Dragon Quest VIII: It's a classic old-school combat system, except that trying to form a detailed strategy is impossible because TURN ORDER IS RANDOM. Seriously, there's just as good a chance of Yangus going first as Jessica, not to mention the enemy party, agility stat be damned. Combined with bullshit cheap shot attacks on enemies such as Wave of Ice (remove all buffs AND dissipate all stored Tension, cutting out half your available strategy, fortunately a boss-only move) and Desperation Attack (what's so "desperate" about an automatic bonus-damage critical which is regularly a 1-hit KO that has no drawbacks and NEVER MISSES?) and the combat was just incredibly frustrating. Additionally, although your characters can learn heaps of different skills from their varied skill trees, more than half of them are WORTHLESS- way too many status-condition inflicting skills that NEVER inflict status conditions, or attack skills that do less damage than your basic physical attack. Like Persona 3, Dragon Quest VIII is still a good enough game in other areas to get by so it remains a classic- just not as perfect as everyone says.
Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time: OK, this is the big one, the one where the combat was so flawed I just threw the game down and said "fuck this shit". Firstly, the ally AI is
pants-on-head retarded. Allies will start casting a slow-to-cast spell (i.e ANY spell) when an enemy is bearing down on them at high speed wielding a big hammer, with only a single hit needed to interrupt their casting. And once they've been interrupted and the enemy is winding up for a second hit, what do they do? Evade? NO, they
start casting the spell again! The problem was compounded by the roughly simultaneous release of Tales of Symphonia which showed how to do real-time party-based action RPG RIGHT. In Tales you can disable any spells or abilities you don't want your allies to use and hotkey the ones you want to be able to use on command to YOUR controls- and it has better AI to start with so it hardly NEEDS these advantages. Enemies in Star Ocean are pure bullshit in later areas, especially Sphere Company (the stage where I threw in the towel in disgust) such as the tanks capable of wiping out half your party in a single unblockable area attack. The only way to succeed is to exploit the crafting system to give the main character an immensely powerful weapon and spam a single overpowered skill (Side Kick) until he levels up enough to learn his completely broken abilities (Air Raid and Dimension Door). Although the combat system was initially kind of fun, it rapidly became frustrating and, eventually, completely intolerable.
Arbitrary Cidin said:
Okami 2 (Okamiden) because it's going to be a DS exclusive. Remember who made you, Okami? PS2! That's who! Why not a PSP version?
You know, this is the stupidest thing I've heard since... yesterday. You're bashing a game that ISN'T OUT YET for being on a console which is FAR MORE APPROPRIATE FOR ITS MAIN GAMEPLAY MECHANIC. When I first heard about the original Okami my first thought was "why ISN'T this on DS?"
