This post was last modified: May 24, 2016 at 5:12 PM by
Draku.
i've always found myself having the most fun overall with jrpgs and simply letting myself get wrapped up in the enjoyment of combat and the charm of the overall character/setting design only to realize it's hours later. that's a large part of why i like neptunia so much, it fulfills that beautifully without ever making things too complex. it's an extremely basic series but i think it's better off for it, a lot of jrpgs try too hard to introduce a bunch of gimmicks to their dungeons, make you run around areas to activate all of the various cutscenes to pad out the hours, and what have you.
neptunia knows that the cutscenes are a main attraction and since the games are too low budget to have non-dungeon areas they can't pad the game out with those either and thus simply hand them to you. so there's a great pacing where you can enjoy the whimsical nature of the characters and plot, have it end before it gets old, go into a dungeon and have fun simply playing the game with no huge gimmicks for a while (such a fun battle system too, holy shit. it's not too complex but it has just the right amount of interaction and requiring attention while still being relaxing to play), and then right before that might become stale for the moment, you're given a breather in the form of more fun scenes. it's a formula that works and it has almost no bells or whistles that might get in the way.
the harder part would be choosing which one i like the most. if i had to be objective it'd end up being v-ii easily, but mk2 has the advantage in my particular case for being the first one i played and thus the one i went into with zero expectations and came out having the most pure enjoyment i'd had in a game in years or possibly ever, so i have an extremely positive tint upon how i view it in particular. i suppose you could also make the point that mk2 was the one that set the series on the current track it's on (after what i learned was one of the most horrendous starts to a series ever) and thus deserves more praise for being more original gameplay-wise than the others which simply build off of its example.
it's definitely not a series for everyone but it hits everything i like about jrpgs, my favorite genre, in just the right spots. i could not at all claim that they're masterpieces or anything. plus the re;births kind of made people who started on PC/vita have a weird view of the series thanks to the laziness of how they were made by a different developer who managed to make already somewhat similar games nearly identical feeling and also made a whole "new" game out of recycled content from the other entries in r;b1. at least i still managed to have fun with those.
(May 24, 2016 at 4:57 PM)T-man Wrote: The simplification of Mario's move set is the worst thing about new 3D Mario games, Sunshine Mario was fluid as fuck. If you were a good player you had quite a few tricks in your arsenal to make the act of traversal fun.
3d mario has only lost control options since 64 and it baffles the FUCK out of me. i mean super mario 3d world is a very different style of game but there's no excuse in galaxy's case at all. sunshine at least substituted for what it removed from mario's arsenal with the fludd.