daoster said:
To be fair, you're not forced to grind for money. I'm in July and I don't even know what to do with all the money I've accumulated.
Nor do you have to grind to make equipment or weapons...only the unique weapons and equipment, which I've barely touched at all.
Grinding for XP...well, I was doing that already in VC1 towards the end, and I haven't done too much
The side quests in this game are basically stories for the side characters. I don't see that big of a difference between grinding for their sidequests in this game and grinding in VC1 to unlock the data entries for those side characters. Maybe in VC1 it wasn't as arbitrary, but still...
Though the class change system is definitely something that needs to be fixed for VC3. Arbitrarily awarding the characters credits (how exactly did my VIP character NOT get Arms X?) is kind of getting annoying.
And of course, I hope to God that VC3 is back on consoles, where it belongs. Glorious HD, huge stages , and...a larger limit than 5 characters on screen at once.
I agree that most of the grinding doesn't actually make a huge drain on the game. I just feel that what they've done with each and every gameplay system in the game is basically add more filler to it, which is what I mean by "grind". It's not so much that it completely ruins the game, but it throws off the pace and focus of the game imo. Like I said, VC1 was a very focused game, there was less quantity, but a lot more quality. My beef here is that in every aspect they have added a lot "more" but the overall usefulness and quality has gone down.
For example, now you have way, way more weapons available to develop, but it doesn't make the game better, it's just more time/resource wasting content. The stats of most of the weapons, including the ones you get plans for, just don't seem totally worthwhile to me. The vehicle customization options are good though, and it seems they really put more thought into that than anything else.
Another example is the missions. There are now way more mandatory missions you have to play, but the only really, really good ones are the story missions, of which there is one a month. That means 1/5 of missions are really worthwhile, and the rest are filler. That really waters down the overall experience.
As far as the sidequests go, I do think that there is a huge difference between how it was done in VC1 and how it is done in VC2. In VC1, you simply had to buy an entry, and it often came with a unique mission complete with story elements. In VC2, instead of buying, you have to actually actively use a character in battles to get more of their story.
This, combined with the class change mechanics, means that sometimes you will deliberately make shitty tactical decisions (using a weaker character you normally wouldn't even if the situation doesn't require it at all, using a character of a class which has no benefit to the mission at all, etc) just to trigger certain things from the game. VC1 never forced or penalized the player for not using a character, because the game was designed around doing what was best for the mission. VC2 on the other hand, is filled with these game-isms which invite the player to do stupid game stuff just to advance certain parts of the game. It's really annoying.
The problem is actually made a lot worse by the fact that there is now yet another support class added (Armored Techs). Classes like Lancers, Engineers, and Armored Techs are such that in a normal battle situation you will almost never have to use them too much. Much of the battle will be fought by Scouts and Shocktroopers. But that doesn't mean units who are used less should be made to feel useless.
The way VC2 is designed, you pretty much tend to want to do dumb shit like deploy these classes even when you don't need to just to get them credits so you can potential upgrade their class in future so they don't lag behind. You might also like a certain character and want to see their backstory, but unfortunately if the character is an Engineer or an Armored Tech, it means you either wait a long time to ever see it, or you literally replay a mission with no intention of playing it "properly" but just using a support character over and over to grind the CP use required to see more of his/her story. That's dumb.
In VC1 I really felt that the entire squad was a character, and the squad grew together. Regardless of who gets used in a mission or who sits on the bench, it's all a team effort. I really loved that. In VC2, it feels like any other SRPG where it's every character for him/herself and the player has to manage them individually. Really disappointing. :/
R
