Topic: Well, that's a huge surprise

[gpw11]

So, I drove by a games store the other day and decided to head in to check out what they had.  I stumbled across three games I've always kind of been interested in/heard about;

-Soul Nomad and the World Eaters (or something like that)
-Disgaea
-Odin Sphere

I ended up buying Disgaea and Odin Sphere.  I passed on Soul Nomad because I remember reading that it was really frusterating and time consuming so I figured I'd check out a Lets Play! on the game over at something awful first.  Anyways, for no particular reason I decided to boot up the PS2 emulation program I had been messing around with a while ago, PCSX2 and try out Odin Sphere.   Holy shit! 

A.) With a bit of tweaking the game runs almost perfectly (the only problem I've run across is that some of the audio in the cut scenes slowly come out of sync.  Not that big of a deal and they fix themselves pretty often.)  I actually had to enable the frame limiter.

B.) The game looks absolutely stunning on the PC.  The high res sprites are perfect for 1680x1050.  My jaw pretty much actually hit the floor.

I think in a year or so PS2 emulation could be a very very good thing.

[Ghandi]

How decent of a system does PS2 emulation require? My system pretty much maxes out with games released around 4 years ago or so, but I would really like to run some PS2 games if I can.

[gpw11]

That seems unlikely.  There are aparently only a few games running full speed without major errors at this point and it takes a pretty hefty CPU.  As far as I know dual core is a must.

[Ghandi]

[TheOtherBelmont]

That's cool man, I hope you enjoy Odin Sphere as much as I did.

[gpw11]

I've played through the first 30 or so min, and I'm really liking it so far.  I will, however, have to hold off on it at least until I finish Persona 3.  Is it a long game?

[Quemaqua]

I haven't gotten into yet either despite buying it ages ago.  But I did load it up and absolutely drool over all the pretty things.  I'm looking forward to getting into it when I get some other stuff off my plate.  And Disgaea is completely awesome too.  I put a shitload of time into that one just mucking around on the PSP version.  There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you get a feel for the flow of the game and all the stuff you can do, it's one of the most addictive things you can play.

[Cobra951]

How decent of a system does PS2 emulation require? My system pretty much maxes out with games released around 4 years ago or so, but I would really like to run some PS2 games if I can.

That's where I am myself, really.  2005 was the last good year for my PC and big new games.  I looked at the emulator requirements, and they recently dropped support for shaders lower than 2.0.  That leaves me out of it even before considering the CPU.

[TheOtherBelmont]

I've played through the first 30 or so min, and I'm really liking it so far.  I will, however, have to hold off on it at least until I finish Persona 3.  Is it a long game?

I think the average play time is between 25-35 hours.

[scottws]

I couldn't get into Disgaea.  I don't know what it is.  I liked Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics.  I think it was really overwhelming in its depth, even initially.

I'm not familiar with the other games you purchased.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, overwhelming is a good word for it.  It's one of the deepest games I've ever been able to personally get into, and it's humorous, light-hearted surface does nothing to bely the ridiculous levels you can eventually take things if you so choose.  And what's nice is it isn't either ridiculously hard or just grinding levels and powerups for the sake of it.  It's sort of its own reward in the sense that if you want to do all the craziest stuff you can do to get the most powerful stuff ever, you can almost go on doing it forever, continually being challenged as you since everything you have to do to attain that next tier continues to push your skills and such.  At least for as much of it as I've ever done.  It's really an interesting game with a weird design I've never seen duplicated.  Makes a perfect portable game on PSP, too.

[gpw11]

WE should, however, get one thing out of the way though; Disgaea looks like garbage on both a television and a monitor. 

[Quemaqua]

It does?  I always thought it was quite an attractive game.  Certainly no high-res wonder, but the art is extremely expressive.

[gpw11]

Sorry, I should explain that I mean from a technical standpoint.  The actual art style seems pretty nice (if a bit too japanese/anime). It could be because I haven't given it much time at all and saw it right after Odin Sphere though.

[Quemaqua]

Well, yeah.  Comparing any 2D game visually to Odin Sphere will result in that game being set on fire, hung, and urinated on.

[gpw11]

Ok, ok, big news.  I decided to load up PCSX2 again to see how Viewtiful Joe 2 works on it.  It works pretty well, a tiny bit slow but that could probably be fixed with settings (or worst case - overclocking). I decided to scrap that idea, but that's not the important thing. 

The PS2 version of NiGHTS into Dreams runs perfectly (Japanese only). 100% speed, substantially better graphics than the original if you want them, no noticeable glitches, and everything but the save screen and tips when you die are in english.  I'll get some screens up tomorrow probably, but I'm pumped.

I've been a fan of the game since playing it at a friends wasted years ago in highschool.  I actually almost went out and bought a Saturn as my first system because of it but didn't for some reason (probably figured out how many 40's of OE I could buy for that price). I do think it's overrated considering how the fans of the games are raving lunatics, but I personally view it as one of the pinnacles of the old school style platform games. I'm actually really happy about this.

[Quemaqua]

I'd love to see some screens, being a fan myself.

[gpw11]

I'll try to get some screens up tomorrow.  For now though, I think have hit a rather annoying glitch.

[gpw11]

Problem solved.  Isolated incident, and easily fixed.  I'll totally get some stuff up tomorrow.

[gpw11]

The first ingame screen is from the Saturn port of the original.  The second from the "Brand New Dream" 'remake'.  Ignore the framerate in the first version.  I couldn't use FRAPS to capture the shots because the button it was assigned to fucked with the emulator so I had to switch graphics plugins and for some reason the one I had to use didn't really like the Saturn version all that much (well, now...I think that one was fine when I originally checked it out). 

[Quemaqua]

Looks awesome.  And reminds me that I wanted to try FFXII on the emu since I got my new video card.

[gpw11]

I haven't tried it personally, but apparently FFXII is one of the better running games (I think).  I've seen screens at least and it's pretty awesome looking.  The emulator is still in a kind of unpolished state, both in functionality and user interface, but it does the job and it's not at the point where it's overcomplicated like epsxe (yet).  They're more worried about compatibility rather than enhancement at this point.  Dual core is pretty much a necessity though (although I think you're good there). I got Klonoa 2 running full speed, but there were a few graphical errors here or there.

In somewhat related news, I was messing around with Gamecube emulation today, and it's coming along.  Wind Waker was fully playable from what I saw, pretty close to full speed without much tweaking (it wasn't running  quite that well for me, but I wasn't using the ideal version from what I understand).  There is no sound however.  Apparently, the main GC emulator - Dolphin, went open source rather recently and a lot of progress has been made (to the point where it's even running Wii games).  It's nothing you can just sit down and play through completely at this point, but give it a year or so and I think we'll see big things. They're fulling taking advantage of x64 now, and that's helping a lot.  I'm actually pretty impressed with what I've seen of the DC, PS2, and GC emulators in the last year or so. 

[gpw11]

So, I tried out FFXII on the new revision of the emulator released recently.  It's kind of hit and miss.  Hit in the way that I don't doubt I could very well get it running full speed at a higher resolution than I could otherwise play it at, miss in the way that it seemed like more work than it was worth.  Actually, that's not entirely correct, I should define that it'd be more worth than it'd be worth to me.  It was close to perfect except for a sound bug (which I immediately fixed) and choppy FMVs (which are apparently fixable), but I realized as soon as I started messing around with it that I'd never really get into it at this point. 

When I previously played the game on my PS2 I eventually got so sick of it in some regards that I just quit.  Too MMO grindy...or I may have just been playing it wrong.  Either way, I can't deny that it's a great game and I'd like to give it another try - just not at the moment.   It did look pretty amazing, but I didn't get into any really graphically intensive parts and am unsure of whether I'd need to overclock to get full speed going the whole way through.