I'm here to 3rd it. It's my favorite indie RPG of all time! I simply adore the game. It's very Fire Emblem esque, but also stands on its own merits. I loved the strategic combat and the game's take on the French Revolution. So good!
I thought there was like 5 of us in total that have played this game. I remember playing it a while back and Google search at the time yielded NO information or discussion of the game anywhere. But ya I loved it too, cool that others have played it
@@solriver267so just in case you missed those, not exactly the same itch they're scratching but close enough: Dynasty warriors Godseekers on PS4, finally on sales from now on it seems, it's no Dynasty tactics but still enjoyable Midnight Suns is also on sales and I recommend the full edition with all DLC, I was quite skeptic at first as I wanted XCOM3 but it's actually an amazing game Miasma chronicles is everything Mutant year zero was but better, loved it Fort Triumph brings back some Heroes of M&M 3 vibes along with traditional TRPG gameplay, quite good for a small indie title Fire emblem engage is a pure FE gameplay-wise, who cares about the story... Warhammer 40k Battle sector is just awesome, too bad they didn't add any new campaign with latest DLC... Relayer is a cheap Super Robot Wars but manages to find its own identity and is a fun play I'll stop there, hopefully there's one you didn't try and will fill the gap while waiting for Banner of the Maid 2, one can dream :) (I stayed on recent games but you also have Jeanne d'Arc on PSP that is quite good...)
Hi Erick, I'm Indonesian and I didn't even know there was Indonesian Publisher making any game for PS4. Thanks to raise it up. Definitely gonna find and try it ASAP...
Banner of the Maid is one of the most polished Fire Emblem games ever made. The maps are tightly designed and almost each one has great antiturtling incentives. Gameplaywise it rivals Conquest and Engage in my opinion. In many ways it even surpasses FE mechanically. The set durability per map is a great fix to the 'durability or no durability' debate, and the one-save-per-map is a great fix to the 'turnwheel or no turnwheel' debate.
I wish Fire Emblem would go back to the DS era save system. They had one-use save points on the maps in these titles (usually one or two depending on map size).
Trials of Mana is 10/10 I played through it 3 times to get all the different storylines and saw everything 100%. Amazing. I played Witcher 2 on the Xbox360 back in the day, and it was good.
Thank you for always taking the time to talk about RPGs. I constantly come back to your channel to find more hidden gems and good reviews in the RPG genre. Your passion definitely shows through!
You're the man i go to for rpg reviews or even just a look at what's out there. Don't have time to commit to alot of them so i gotta make sure what i pick is worth it.
Trials of Mana is a great game, but the AI companion leave much to be desired, and that's like my only complaints with the game. I don't really mind the battle encounter so much since I mostly play turn-based JRPG anyway, so the change of pace is really welcome.
I bought Poison Control because a friend of mine (who knows my tastes better than I do) recommended it to me... Like you, I wasn't sure about it at first and found it overly difficult. I was about to quit, when suddenly, the strategy just clicked with me... and I ended up loving it so much. It was seriously one of my highlights of 2021. BTW, you don't have to "cover a mire" to purge it: you just have circle the mire. Hell has never been so pink and so much fun. I'm so glad to see this game get some love. It brought me so much happiness in the middle of COVID and a big trans-Pacific move.
Yes yes yes on Trials of Mana. It's the most fun i had since I played Sunset Overdrive in 2020. I literally beat it about 5 times in a row when I finally got around to it b/c the combat and the Traits system is so good.
I'm so happy you finally got into Witcher 3. Its a narrative masterpiece. I put well over 200 hours into that game and I don't usually linger like that. I just wanted to experience every aspect of the story. Some tips for Witcher 3 would be you're over thinking the horse and boat controls. Both are very simple and very smooth. For the horse, you can literally just hold x and it will run along the path and you just use the directions to choose between splits. The boat just has boat controls. Left goes right, right goes left because that is how it works on a real boat. The boat is so much fun to use once it clicks.
I feel like I’m the only person who preferred Witcher 2. It was the first one that I played and it blew my mind. I loved the 3rd one but you only get to play the series for the first time once, that’s my excuse anyway.
@@richardaaron4454 My first experience was with the original Witcher on PC and I loved that game, even if it ran a little janky on my potato PC at the time. lol I still can remember Geralts tear down of a whole town for being assholes to a certain person, no spoilers because the remake will probably do that moment justice lol, and it was just well done. CDPR knows how to tell a story. I love all of their games so far. Witcher 3 and CyberPunk are tied for my favorites. CP2077 after the big fix is probably one of my favorite games of all time at this point.
Great to see that you gave Witcher 3 a chance. Just as you, I do tend no to be much of a fan of Western RPGs, but Witcher 3 was great at doing most things I usually don't like much (for example, it's kinda sandbox open world). I still haven't played the big DLC expansion... I should probably get back to that at some point.
I'm playing Trials of Mana (in preparation for the new Mana game coming out this year) right now and I'm really enjoying it. Some of the boss fights are no joke. I love how colorful and cute it is. But the English voice acting is some of the worst I've ever heard. I could probably voice every character myself and do a better job. It's the only thing that really takes me out of the game. Hopefully for Visions of Mana they hire pro voice actors. Oh and yeah the ridiculously skimpy outfits on the female party members is something else, but my team is mostly male. Though Duran's midriff/ab exposing outfit and the chaps over his trousers distract me in a good way too 😆
Poison Control's graphics look like Persona 5 Tactica and the name first made me expect a game where you fight poison cells inside a person's body. Aside from Osmosis Jones and Cells At Work you hardly see that premise used. Can't wait to see more of Visions of Mana.
Keep the short rpg recommendations coming. I'm getting sick of games that require life commitments to complete. Especially when the content is mostly grinding and not actual content.
Wait, I thought there was fast travel in Trials of Mana? I beat it on PC, and I guess I just forgot it didn't have it. I definitely remember riding on the back of a dragon or something to travel from place to place, but was that it? Guess it never felt that problematic to me 😅
Yep, not sure what he's talking about there; there are some cannons you can use to fast travel early on, and later on you get a Dragon (it's required to reach the various God-Beasts). Since it appears he was using Lise, Angie, and Hawk, though, managed to skip all three of the potential healers lol, so probably had to run back to Inns (if you use that combo, you must have lots of heal items and almost certainly want Light Lise for buffs). Charlotte/Carlie is best girl, giving you super heals regardless of path, even if she's a Necromancer, and Duran/Kevin can both be decent healers on Light Path.
PLEASE read or atleast listen to the Witcher books. I fell in love with the game without context, but reading those books made me love EVERYTHING about the game. Geralt, Yen, Ciri, Dandelion, Skelege, Emir, the politics, everything. It's insane that without context it's already a masterpiece, but somehow gets even better and bigger and more emotional. The shows are redigested dog shit, maybe like 20% canon. You need to read them, ESPECIALLY to appreciate Blood and Wine a lot more
My friend and I played Witcher 3 three times to see the different endings, mostly of the expansion. I thought it was funny you showed the scene with Yennefer and Triss that we got the 1st time we played, because we told them both we love them
17:39 - I only got around to The Witcher 3 a few years ago, myself, and it was a bit disappointing to see how glitch-ridden this much-touted game was. My favourite moment in the whole game was when I stop atop a hill in a "It's over, I have the high ground" moment, only for my enemy to run THROUGH the ground and flail wildly at the spot directly beneath me...
Oh, hey, I remember Poison Control. I liked it enough to give a small guide on the GameFAQs board years ago to help people find the special endings and what they might be missing. It's a hell of a game to explain, and of course, it's one with some odd difficulty curving, with level 3 I think being one of the hardest in the game just because it's the first one(Of only a few in the whole game) with infinitely respawning enemies.
Hi. I played banner of the maid, wasn't expecting much and I was pleasingly surprised. Just ordered Poison Control after watching your video. It seemsreally great and quite unorthodox. Thank for the video !
Everyone is going to be so happy that you played the Witcher 3 lol. I also don't like how slow it is to get to places in open world games. I rather have small open worlds and imagine theyre bigger than they are. I need to be engaged constantly.
I know its probably not up your alley as far as combat goes, but I would love to see you play and review the Mass Effect trilogy and CyberPunk 2077. Both have great story telling even tho they are shooters. Still RPGs thru and thru tho so maybe give them a shot someday to try something outside your box.
The best era for RPG are snes, ps1 and ps2. Nowadays they just don't reach the level they were back then with story, music and gameplay. Sea of stars is the closest you can get
I'm also not as into WRPGs as JRPGs but there are a few games and series that I'm into. Definitely considered Witcher 2 and 3 to be at the top until Baldur's Gate 3 came out.
I've tried multiple to get into the witcher 3 multiple times but haven't been able to, I have a yearly tradition of re-downloading the game playing it for 10 hours then deinstalling it. While I enjoy its story the gameplay leaves something to be desired of.
Hi Erick. If you really want to try other great Western RPGs, pleeeease try Fable The Lost Chapters, maybe Fable 2. And also Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 Night of the Raven. Be patient with Gothics gameplay though, really clunky and old. But the Dialogues and open world is still one of the best after more than 20 years!.
as someone who doesnt like woke i really didnt find it that woke. plenty of rpgs have gay chars like astarion or tsudera chars like lazhel. im suprised so many people havnt played baldurs gate 2 or planes scape torment@@megakoni1
Now it's time to play Mass Effect trilogy. You even like Dragon Age. Which is similar and made by the same developer. I am the same as you i don't line 90% of western RPGs. But i love Mass Effect and Witcher 3.
wicher 2 combat ironicly was more responsive and they look similir too. witcher 2 has a worse tutorial doe. feel like erick is the type of guy to not pay attention in tutorials and would not equip his silver sword since in witcher 3 this is automatic in witcher 2 it was not
@@NeutralGloomBot It is part of what Erik said, but there is a lot of back and fort that seems more like fetch quest than good game play. To be fair I have not tried it since 3 the wild hunt came out, so maybe also some of the bugs were there that annoyed me. I might go back to it some day when I have time for the backlog.
@@deatho0ne587 I put 200 hours into Witcher 3 and I loathe fetch quests. What Witcher does, and more accurately what CDPR does well is making their side quests as narratively strong as their main quests. There are still monster hunts, but usually they have a story reason attached to them that makes it more interesting. Some are dark as fuck too. I mean yeah there are icons on the map you can chase to beat monsters and collect items but I just had fun doing that because exploring the world was enjoyable. You could skip all of that and just do the side quests and main quests tho so that's a personal choice. Imo, no RPG developer makes their side quests more fun to do than CDPR. The Fallout series is a close second with Elder Scrolls being third because I always feel ES side content gets a little samey by the end.
I think Trials of Mana is a lot better than you give it credit for here. I found it a real joy and didn't experience any of the issues you mentioned. Of course, I played it on PS5 so maybe there was a big performance difference over the Switch? Regardless, I've started, but not beaten, a lot of games in the last few years, but this was one I not only beat but did the post-game content for. I'm planning on going back to it again one day to go through with the 3 characters I didn't chose for my first play-through.
The fact that I didn't like Witcher 3 is an evidence that I just don't like western RPGs. Poison Control actually sounds interesting, might pick it up.
I generally love western RPGs (and JRPGs), but I also didn't like bitcher 3. There's a lot of reasons for this, some of them are personal preference but some of them are much more objective criticisms of the game. Specifically: - No character customization: Purely a preference on my part, but being able to craft a character's appearance and identity are things that western RPGs do better in most cases. Sure, in games like Mass Effect and Cyberpunk you have a name and a voice, but almost everything otherwise is customizable and that's one of my favorite parts. - Strong attack is too slow: Even when you manage to get a hit off with it, the damage in comparison to quick attack makes it not a worthwhile choice. This makes most of the combat boil down to spamming quick attack with the occasional spell thrown in. - Spells are generally weak and boring: I know that, on hard mode, the spells become critical utility tools that are necessary to overcome specific enemies, but on Normal you just throw up the stun shield spell and whenever you get hit you just re-apply it. - Not a lot of "build" variance: You have skill points to distribute, but the game expects every player to use a little bit of everything, with swordplay being the primary mode of damage dealing. Usually, I like playing Paladins or other primarily melee characters, so this didn't bother me as much as I would expect it to bother other people. - Extremely low returns on "grinding": Witcher 3 taught me that the only thing worse than a game requiring the player to grind for levels, is a game that is designed to prevent it. If you try to gain xp by going out into the wild and killing random mobs, you will get next to 0 experience for doing so. This is because the game wants you to accrue experience by doing jobs and killing the monsters associated with those. The problem with this is, the further you deviate from the critical path of jobs, the more you will find yourself in a situation where you are either overleveled for jobs you missed that you have to backtrack to find, or you are underleveled for the jobs that are nearby and have little chance of beating them just due to the enemy stats making your attacks too weak to finish the job. I was able to beat more than a few jobs that were above my level, but eventually you hit a plateau and the only way to go forwards is to go back and do what you missed. - Mixed feelings about the story/writing: This is another personal preference of mine. I won't say the writing is "bad", and I like that many of the significant choices in the game are made early rather than right before the end. But, it was not such a good story that it engaged me enough to ignore everything I didn't like about the game. I don't think bitcher 3 is emblematic of western RPGs, I think it's another example of an action game adopting "RPG elements" in a superficial way to try and net an RPG audience without alienating people who aren't as obsessive about the stats and customization that go into an RPG. I *reeeallly* wanted to like this game, and I might give it another shot in the future, but I don't think it's a very good example of Western RPGs in general
TL;DW list: * Good: - Banner of the Maid (2019. Pros: Serious story. Stunning art & 'fan-service'. Good for strategy grognards. Cons: mediocre english localisation. Only one anti-climactic ending. Super hard combat. Small units. Drab music.) - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015. Pros: Erick loved this masterpiece A LOT! Storytelling, narrative, well written dialogue. Many slightly different endings. Good & solid combat, but not perfect. FULL NUDITY! No JRPG comes close! Cons: technical issues & glitches till he downloaded a mammoth update. Lacking enemy & boss variety. Horse & boat hard to control.) --- * Decent: - Fallen Legion: Rise to Glory (2018. Combines "Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire" and "Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion" into a single release. Pros: Good story, music. Cons: Too tiring controls; grind; trial & errors.) - Poison Control (2020. Switch & PS4 only. Sorry. Pros: Good colours, music. Fun gameplay. Cons: kinda bad aiming; no autosave & checkpoint.) - Trials of Mana (3D remake of 1995 Japanese only SFC title. Released 2020. That SFC title was in 2019 worldwide release of Collection of Mana just before. Pros: Re-classing. No random encounters. Some good characters. Good, tasty fan-service. Solid remake. Cons (WAY TOO MANY!): Relentlessly hard & somewhat technical combat. Somewhat stiff controls. Only some of 6 playable characters are good (Hawkeye dies too often). Bit grindy for re-classing. Hard to avoid enemies like in original version or Chrono Trigger; hence difficult exploration. No fast travel till late in game, eh?! Interesting but generic story.) A brilliant roundup. There's not a single bad game. These videos are why we all love you! Onward and upward to 100,000 subscribers with just 5000 left to go!
I have to check out Banner of the Maid but on easy mode. I might get some hate, but W3 is one of the most overrated games in history. Combat is meh, main story is meh - find Ciri but oops, she is already gone and you missed her for about seconds but please do some quests for us lazy people here to waste even more time finding her - riding and boating - I never came to the boat part - is meh. TBH, I couldn´t get into it and gave up after a few hours - even on easy. I don´t know why this game is praised so much as one of the best or the best ARPG of all time or something like that. This is subjective anyway. A so-called "good" (main) story can´t balance the weak gameplay it has in my opinion.
The combat killed The Witcher 3 for me. And being generally disinterested in the story didnt help either. Geralt is profoundly boring as a protagonist.
If you want amazing writing like you see in The Witcher 3, I highly recommend you check out Planescape: Torment. It's easily one of the best video game stories I've ever played through alongside Xenogears
Best Witcher 3 review. Did you play with the PS5 Ehancements? Playing this off/on for years on PS4 and now on XBox Series X and should be finishing the campaign next few years, lots of side quests 🙃
Banner of the Maid is unforgiving. I remember playing that game on the hardest difficulty and absolutely getting destroyed. I then switched it to the easiest difficulty and was still having problems. Call it a skill issue, but damn that game felt like the dark souls of strategy rpgs.
I bought witcher 3, I force myself to play because I pay for it, I played for 50 hours..... Ya, I still don't like it. QAQ I just don't like the battle system. I would crown Mass Effect 2 as the best western RPG instead....
Am just here to second Banner of the Maid. Excellent excellent game in all aspects, story, gameplay, music, characters, plot twists, graphics.
I'm here to 3rd it. It's my favorite indie RPG of all time! I simply adore the game. It's very Fire Emblem esque, but also stands on its own merits. I loved the strategic combat and the game's take on the French Revolution. So good!
I thought there was like 5 of us in total that have played this game. I remember playing it a while back and Google search at the time yielded NO information or discussion of the game anywhere. But ya I loved it too, cool that others have played it
so now we know, there are at least 5 of us who enjoyed this game greatly :)
make that 6 of us. banner of the maid needs more. and i mean more.
@@solriver267so just in case you missed those, not exactly the same itch they're scratching but close enough:
Dynasty warriors Godseekers on PS4, finally on sales from now on it seems, it's no Dynasty tactics but still enjoyable
Midnight Suns is also on sales and I recommend the full edition with all DLC, I was quite skeptic at first as I wanted XCOM3 but it's actually an amazing game
Miasma chronicles is everything Mutant year zero was but better, loved it
Fort Triumph brings back some Heroes of M&M 3 vibes along with traditional TRPG gameplay, quite good for a small indie title
Fire emblem engage is a pure FE gameplay-wise, who cares about the story...
Warhammer 40k Battle sector is just awesome, too bad they didn't add any new campaign with latest DLC...
Relayer is a cheap Super Robot Wars but manages to find its own identity and is a fun play
I'll stop there, hopefully there's one you didn't try and will fill the gap while waiting for Banner of the Maid 2, one can dream :)
(I stayed on recent games but you also have Jeanne d'Arc on PSP that is quite good...)
Hi Erick, I'm Indonesian and I didn't even know there was Indonesian Publisher making any game for PS4. Thanks to raise it up. Definitely gonna find and try it ASAP...
There are a lot of small and Indie Indo rpg Devs. Right now Korea and China are on the rise for JRPGs, but Indonesia is only slightly behind.
Fyi “Space of the unbound” also made by indonesian publisher i believe.. but will give fallen legion a try 👌
Banner of the Maid is fantastic. Nice to see you agree.
Banner of the Maid is one of the most polished Fire Emblem games ever made. The maps are tightly designed and almost each one has great antiturtling incentives. Gameplaywise it rivals Conquest and Engage in my opinion. In many ways it even surpasses FE mechanically. The set durability per map is a great fix to the 'durability or no durability' debate, and the one-save-per-map is a great fix to the 'turnwheel or no turnwheel' debate.
I wish Fire Emblem would go back to the DS era save system. They had one-use save points on the maps in these titles (usually one or two depending on map size).
Wow! I remember asking about Witcher 3 in a Q&A you had and answered that you might come back to it. I'm so happy you love it!
Trials of Mana is 10/10
I played through it 3 times to get all the different storylines and saw everything 100%.
Amazing.
I played Witcher 2 on the Xbox360 back in the day, and it was good.
I enjoyed the hell out of banner of the maid. I gave me jeane d'arc x fire emblem vibes. Its very affordable too.
Thank you for always taking the time to talk about RPGs. I constantly come back to your channel to find more hidden gems and good reviews in the RPG genre. Your passion definitely shows through!
You're the man i go to for rpg reviews or even just a look at what's out there. Don't have time to commit to alot of them so i gotta make sure what i pick is worth it.
Definitely gonna play Poison Control and Trials of Mana. Maybe The Witcher 3 as well.
Trials of Mana is a great game, but the AI companion leave much to be desired, and that's like my only complaints with the game. I don't really mind the battle encounter so much since I mostly play turn-based JRPG anyway, so the change of pace is really welcome.
I bought Poison Control because a friend of mine (who knows my tastes better than I do) recommended it to me... Like you, I wasn't sure about it at first and found it overly difficult. I was about to quit, when suddenly, the strategy just clicked with me... and I ended up loving it so much. It was seriously one of my highlights of 2021.
BTW, you don't have to "cover a mire" to purge it: you just have circle the mire.
Hell has never been so pink and so much fun.
I'm so glad to see this game get some love. It brought me so much happiness in the middle of COVID and a big trans-Pacific move.
Yes yes yes on Trials of Mana. It's the most fun i had since I played Sunset Overdrive in 2020. I literally beat it about 5 times in a row when I finally got around to it b/c the combat and the Traits system is so good.
I'm so happy you finally got into Witcher 3. Its a narrative masterpiece. I put well over 200 hours into that game and I don't usually linger like that. I just wanted to experience every aspect of the story. Some tips for Witcher 3 would be you're over thinking the horse and boat controls. Both are very simple and very smooth. For the horse, you can literally just hold x and it will run along the path and you just use the directions to choose between splits. The boat just has boat controls. Left goes right, right goes left because that is how it works on a real boat. The boat is so much fun to use once it clicks.
I feel like I’m the only person who preferred Witcher 2. It was the first one that I played and it blew my mind. I loved the 3rd one but you only get to play the series for the first time once, that’s my excuse anyway.
@@richardaaron4454 My first experience was with the original Witcher on PC and I loved that game, even if it ran a little janky on my potato PC at the time. lol I still can remember Geralts tear down of a whole town for being assholes to a certain person, no spoilers because the remake will probably do that moment justice lol, and it was just well done. CDPR knows how to tell a story. I love all of their games so far. Witcher 3 and CyberPunk are tied for my favorites. CP2077 after the big fix is probably one of my favorite games of all time at this point.
eric doesnt seem to have good memory i suspect he forgets the controls for games besides turnbased games.
commenting for banner of the maid. i platinumed the game on steam.
Great to see that you gave Witcher 3 a chance. Just as you, I do tend no to be much of a fan of Western RPGs, but Witcher 3 was great at doing most things I usually don't like much (for example, it's kinda sandbox open world). I still haven't played the big DLC expansion... I should probably get back to that at some point.
I'm playing Trials of Mana (in preparation for the new Mana game coming out this year) right now and I'm really enjoying it. Some of the boss fights are no joke. I love how colorful and cute it is. But the English voice acting is some of the worst I've ever heard. I could probably voice every character myself and do a better job. It's the only thing that really takes me out of the game. Hopefully for Visions of Mana they hire pro voice actors. Oh and yeah the ridiculously skimpy outfits on the female party members is something else, but my team is mostly male. Though Duran's midriff/ab exposing outfit and the chaps over his trousers distract me in a good way too 😆
I wonder if Erick doesn't know that during the French Revolutionary times, cleavage WAS the in thing. It's historically accurate as far as that goes.
Poison Control's graphics look like Persona 5 Tactica and the name first made me expect a game where you fight poison cells inside a person's body. Aside from Osmosis Jones and Cells At Work you hardly see that premise used. Can't wait to see more of Visions of Mana.
Wish you would list the games in description to be able to find them easily after watching.
Keep the short rpg recommendations coming. I'm getting sick of games that require life commitments to complete. Especially when the content is mostly grinding and not actual content.
Wait, I thought there was fast travel in Trials of Mana? I beat it on PC, and I guess I just forgot it didn't have it.
I definitely remember riding on the back of a dragon or something to travel from place to place, but was that it? Guess it never felt that problematic to me 😅
Yep, not sure what he's talking about there; there are some cannons you can use to fast travel early on, and later on you get a Dragon (it's required to reach the various God-Beasts).
Since it appears he was using Lise, Angie, and Hawk, though, managed to skip all three of the potential healers lol, so probably had to run back to Inns (if you use that combo, you must have lots of heal items and almost certainly want Light Lise for buffs). Charlotte/Carlie is best girl, giving you super heals regardless of path, even if she's a Necromancer, and Duran/Kevin can both be decent healers on Light Path.
PLEASE read or atleast listen to the Witcher books. I fell in love with the game without context, but reading those books made me love EVERYTHING about the game. Geralt, Yen, Ciri, Dandelion, Skelege, Emir, the politics, everything. It's insane that without context it's already a masterpiece, but somehow gets even better and bigger and more emotional. The shows are redigested dog shit, maybe like 20% canon. You need to read them, ESPECIALLY to appreciate Blood and Wine a lot more
banner of the maid actually requires u to think strategically and that's why I love it
the first game definitely my fav, as die hard fan of valkyrie profile i cant wait to play this one
My friend and I played Witcher 3 three times to see the different endings, mostly of the expansion. I thought it was funny you showed the scene with Yennefer and Triss that we got the 1st time we played, because we told them both we love them
Erick playing a western rpg???!!!
Character development
17:39 - I only got around to The Witcher 3 a few years ago, myself, and it was a bit disappointing to see how glitch-ridden this much-touted game was. My favourite moment in the whole game was when I stop atop a hill in a "It's over, I have the high ground" moment, only for my enemy to run THROUGH the ground and flail wildly at the spot directly beneath me...
Oh, hey, I remember Poison Control. I liked it enough to give a small guide on the GameFAQs board years ago to help people find the special endings and what they might be missing. It's a hell of a game to explain, and of course, it's one with some odd difficulty curving, with level 3 I think being one of the hardest in the game just because it's the first one(Of only a few in the whole game) with infinitely respawning enemies.
If you need more "bossfights" you need to do contracts quests. They are great too.
Now you need to try baldurs gate 3.
Hi. I played banner of the maid, wasn't expecting much and I was pleasingly surprised. Just ordered Poison Control after watching your video. It seemsreally great and quite unorthodox. Thank for the video !
Thanks. Great set of reviews here.
Nice to See some Indies getting love from ya mr. !
Good character development for giving more chance to a western rpgs
5:59 BDSM was invented the French during that time. "Fanservice" is not an anachronism.
Everyone is going to be so happy that you played the Witcher 3 lol. I also don't like how slow it is to get to places in open world games. I rather have small open worlds and imagine theyre bigger than they are. I need to be engaged constantly.
Banner of the Maid was just £3 on Xbox sales as well. Also- I still believe The Witcher 3 to be the greatest game ever made.
Heh I had the same experience like you with Witcher 3. It took me three times to before it caught my attention. Now I love it.
I bought Banner of the Maiden a few weeks ago and forgot to play it due to my backlog, I'll give it a chance.
I know its probably not up your alley as far as combat goes, but I would love to see you play and review the Mass Effect trilogy and CyberPunk 2077. Both have great story telling even tho they are shooters. Still RPGs thru and thru tho so maybe give them a shot someday to try something outside your box.
The best era for RPG are snes, ps1 and ps2. Nowadays they just don't reach the level they were back then with story, music and gameplay. Sea of stars is the closest you can get
I'm also not as into WRPGs as JRPGs but there are a few games and series that I'm into. Definitely considered Witcher 2 and 3 to be at the top until Baldur's Gate 3 came out.
I'm still part of the "You need to play The Witcher 3" team. I have the game, but I feel lazy to persist on it.
You know Erick, for a straight guy you complain a lot about the “fan service” in some of these games. At least it comes off as complaining.
I've tried multiple to get into the witcher 3 multiple times but haven't been able to, I have a yearly tradition of re-downloading the game playing it for 10 hours then deinstalling it.
While I enjoy its story the gameplay leaves something to be desired of.
Hi Erick. If you really want to try other great Western RPGs, pleeeease try Fable The Lost Chapters, maybe Fable 2. And also Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 Night of the Raven. Be patient with Gothics gameplay though, really clunky and old. But the Dialogues and open world is still one of the best after more than 20 years!.
must also mean he doesnt like games like baldurs gate and plane scape torment. such a shame he might play them when hes 80 doe
@@chris_vp cant say anything about baldurs gate 1 and 2, but 3 is way too woke for me. Even when the core may be good
as someone who doesnt like woke i really didnt find it that woke. plenty of rpgs have gay chars like astarion or tsudera chars like lazhel. im suprised so many people havnt played baldurs gate 2 or planes scape torment@@megakoni1
Now it's time to play Mass Effect trilogy. You even like Dragon Age. Which is similar and made by the same developer.
I am the same as you i don't line 90% of western RPGs. But i love Mass Effect and Witcher 3.
Does banner of the maid have a physical release? Just curious.
Btw as of my comment, banner of the maid is on psn sale for $4.57.
You need to try crystal project !!!!!!!!
You had me at RPG's with lots of fanservice
The distance in Witcher 2 & 3 are the main reasons I can not beat it and can not claim it as great or even good.
wicher 2 combat ironicly was more responsive and they look similir too. witcher 2 has a worse tutorial doe. feel like erick is the type of guy to not pay attention in tutorials and would not equip his silver sword since in witcher 3 this is automatic in witcher 2 it was not
The distance? Can you explain what that means?
Witcher 2 is quite short compared to Witcher 3.
@@NeutralGloomBot It is part of what Erik said, but there is a lot of back and fort that seems more like fetch quest than good game play.
To be fair I have not tried it since 3 the wild hunt came out, so maybe also some of the bugs were there that annoyed me. I might go back to it some day when I have time for the backlog.
@@deatho0ne587 I put 200 hours into Witcher 3 and I loathe fetch quests. What Witcher does, and more accurately what CDPR does well is making their side quests as narratively strong as their main quests. There are still monster hunts, but usually they have a story reason attached to them that makes it more interesting. Some are dark as fuck too.
I mean yeah there are icons on the map you can chase to beat monsters and collect items but I just had fun doing that because exploring the world was enjoyable. You could skip all of that and just do the side quests and main quests tho so that's a personal choice.
Imo, no RPG developer makes their side quests more fun to do than CDPR. The Fallout series is a close second with Elder Scrolls being third because I always feel ES side content gets a little samey by the end.
Erick, try Baldur’s Gate 3…
I think Trials of Mana is a lot better than you give it credit for here. I found it a real joy and didn't experience any of the issues you mentioned. Of course, I played it on PS5 so maybe there was a big performance difference over the Switch? Regardless, I've started, but not beaten, a lot of games in the last few years, but this was one I not only beat but did the post-game content for. I'm planning on going back to it again one day to go through with the 3 characters I didn't chose for my first play-through.
You really waited till 2024 to play Witcher 3? Hmmm 🤔. I wanted to ask you about your opinion of the game Redemption Reapers. Thanks in advance
He has a review of that in one of his hidden gem or hidden trash videos.
You need to bring back your badass intro
He said everyone skipped it, when he checked his TH-cam info so he took it out but I miss it too!
@@richardaaron4454 Really?! The intro always got me hyped! It's what got me into his channel actually lol.
@@FireSwordOfMagic Yep, that’s what he said and showed the TH-cam info from his side. As soon as he stopped using it I missed it.
Rip using witcher 3 as a good western rpg is sad theres so much better ones. Lol
Name them. LOL
Let's talk ...
The fact that I didn't like Witcher 3 is an evidence that I just don't like western RPGs.
Poison Control actually sounds interesting, might pick it up.
I generally love western RPGs (and JRPGs), but I also didn't like bitcher 3. There's a lot of reasons for this, some of them are personal preference but some of them are much more objective criticisms of the game. Specifically:
- No character customization: Purely a preference on my part, but being able to craft a character's appearance and identity are things that western RPGs do better in most cases. Sure, in games like Mass Effect and Cyberpunk you have a name and a voice, but almost everything otherwise is customizable and that's one of my favorite parts.
- Strong attack is too slow: Even when you manage to get a hit off with it, the damage in comparison to quick attack makes it not a worthwhile choice. This makes most of the combat boil down to spamming quick attack with the occasional spell thrown in.
- Spells are generally weak and boring: I know that, on hard mode, the spells become critical utility tools that are necessary to overcome specific enemies, but on Normal you just throw up the stun shield spell and whenever you get hit you just re-apply it.
- Not a lot of "build" variance: You have skill points to distribute, but the game expects every player to use a little bit of everything, with swordplay being the primary mode of damage dealing. Usually, I like playing Paladins or other primarily melee characters, so this didn't bother me as much as I would expect it to bother other people.
- Extremely low returns on "grinding": Witcher 3 taught me that the only thing worse than a game requiring the player to grind for levels, is a game that is designed to prevent it. If you try to gain xp by going out into the wild and killing random mobs, you will get next to 0 experience for doing so. This is because the game wants you to accrue experience by doing jobs and killing the monsters associated with those. The problem with this is, the further you deviate from the critical path of jobs, the more you will find yourself in a situation where you are either overleveled for jobs you missed that you have to backtrack to find, or you are underleveled for the jobs that are nearby and have little chance of beating them just due to the enemy stats making your attacks too weak to finish the job. I was able to beat more than a few jobs that were above my level, but eventually you hit a plateau and the only way to go forwards is to go back and do what you missed.
- Mixed feelings about the story/writing: This is another personal preference of mine. I won't say the writing is "bad", and I like that many of the significant choices in the game are made early rather than right before the end. But, it was not such a good story that it engaged me enough to ignore everything I didn't like about the game.
I don't think bitcher 3 is emblematic of western RPGs, I think it's another example of an action game adopting "RPG elements" in a superficial way to try and net an RPG audience without alienating people who aren't as obsessive about the stats and customization that go into an RPG. I *reeeallly* wanted to like this game, and I might give it another shot in the future, but I don't think it's a very good example of Western RPGs in general
Witcher series is pretty much the only one I can tolerate. Some of the quests are so well written in Witcher 3.
TL;DW list:
* Good:
- Banner of the Maid (2019.
Pros: Serious story. Stunning art & 'fan-service'. Good for strategy grognards.
Cons: mediocre english localisation. Only one anti-climactic ending. Super hard combat. Small units. Drab music.)
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015.
Pros: Erick loved this masterpiece A LOT! Storytelling, narrative, well written dialogue. Many slightly different endings. Good & solid combat, but not perfect. FULL NUDITY! No JRPG comes close!
Cons: technical issues & glitches till he downloaded a mammoth update. Lacking enemy & boss variety. Horse & boat hard to control.)
---
* Decent:
- Fallen Legion: Rise to Glory (2018. Combines "Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire" and "Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion" into a single release.
Pros: Good story, music.
Cons: Too tiring controls; grind; trial & errors.)
- Poison Control (2020. Switch & PS4 only. Sorry.
Pros: Good colours, music. Fun gameplay.
Cons: kinda bad aiming; no autosave & checkpoint.)
- Trials of Mana (3D remake of 1995 Japanese only SFC title. Released 2020. That SFC title was in 2019 worldwide release of Collection of Mana just before.
Pros: Re-classing. No random encounters. Some good characters. Good, tasty fan-service. Solid remake.
Cons (WAY TOO MANY!): Relentlessly hard & somewhat technical combat. Somewhat stiff controls. Only some of 6 playable characters are good (Hawkeye dies too often). Bit grindy for re-classing. Hard to avoid enemies like in original version or Chrono Trigger; hence difficult exploration. No fast travel till late in game, eh?! Interesting but generic story.)
A brilliant roundup. There's not a single bad game. These videos are why we all love you! Onward and upward to 100,000 subscribers with just 5000 left to go!
For me CRPG games are better than JRPGs by far.
Nah DRPG's
Видео на русском идет в углу)
Next time add.timestamps otherwise people like those with disabilities arent going to watch ur videos!!
-1
I have to check out Banner of the Maid but on easy mode.
I might get some hate, but W3 is one of the most overrated games in history.
Combat is meh, main story is meh - find Ciri but oops, she is already gone and you missed her for about seconds but please do some quests for us lazy people here to waste even more time finding her - riding and boating - I never came to the boat part - is meh.
TBH, I couldn´t get into it and gave up after a few hours - even on easy.
I don´t know why this game is praised so much as one of the best or the best ARPG of all time or something like that.
This is subjective anyway.
A so-called "good" (main) story can´t balance the weak gameplay it has in my opinion.
The combat killed The Witcher 3 for me. And being generally disinterested in the story didnt help either. Geralt is profoundly boring as a protagonist.
Now only dark souls remains
Banner of the Maid is such a banger.
Glad to hear you've come around on the Witcher. Still my favorite RPG of all time!
If you want amazing writing like you see in The Witcher 3, I highly recommend you check out Planescape: Torment. It's easily one of the best video game stories I've ever played through alongside Xenogears
My Buddy told me years ago that planescape is amazing. I've played xenogears a few times so I definitely am down for a good story
And I do own it on switch
At least you're not a hypocrit on fanservice. Still a a god forsaken puritan.
I also gotta finish The Witcher III and its expansions, which someone said they are better than the game itself
You are definitely getting old, Erick, haha.
10:00 way to focused on cleavage? thats not possible
also really need to return to witcher3, made it 80% and burned out :-P
Best Witcher 3 review. Did you play with the PS5 Ehancements? Playing this off/on for years on PS4 and now on XBox Series X and should be finishing the campaign next few years, lots of side quests 🙃
Banner of the Maid is unforgiving. I remember playing that game on the hardest difficulty and absolutely getting destroyed. I then switched it to the easiest difficulty and was still having problems. Call it a skill issue, but damn that game felt like the dark souls of strategy rpgs.
I liked the difficulty. Felt like playing Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn all over again!
I bought witcher 3, I force myself to play because I pay for it, I played for 50 hours..... Ya, I still don't like it. QAQ
I just don't like the battle system. I would crown Mass Effect 2 as the best western RPG instead....