WHICH OF THESE ARE A MUST HAVE IN RPG GAMES?

For some reason I have a really hard time imagining you even tolerating Dark Souls, Liberty, much less really having fun with it.

author=Synthetics
Share what you think is a must have in RPG games.
Personally, I think Storyline, Duration, and Music is important.

1. Storyline
2. Map Design
3. Duration
4. Music

Honestly I feel like storyline is the only essential aspect of RPGs. Music would be a fairly distant second, and the other two are luxuries.

author=Feldschlacht IV
If storyline was the only essential part of a storyline, wouldn't you be better off reading a book?

I mean I enjoy other aspects, certainly. I'm just saying I've played great RPGs (like Xenogears) that are pretty bad in a lot of respects but saved by a fantastic story.

Duration is the only one I think a game really needs.

Storyline: While I love a good story and am not impressed by games that don't have good ones, there's really no need for a story. The Legend of Zelda is an excellent example (and this game did, in fact, have a story). You are tossed into the world with three objectives: recover the Tri-force, defeat Ganon, and rescue Zelda. You may have chosen to read the story that came in the box with the cartridge, but if you didn't it made no difference. Even reading the story had no effect on how you perceived the game. You have the objectives. This is one place a story writer my choose to start. In the case of Zelda, this is also where the story writer ended.

Map Design: It's a standard formula, I know, but you don't really need it. An example of an RPG that doesn't use maps is Arthur: The Quest for Excaliber. "But Tom, that game was a text-based adventure, and technically it did use a map." These points are both true, but I must point out that in this text-based adventure (which is really what a table top RPG is), you assume the role of Arthur, hunt for items that will help you claim the throne from King Lot, do favors for NPCs (tending the peasant's broken leg by the bog; acquiring the five objects belonging to evil creatures for the red knight), battle enemies (the black knight, the basilisk, Nudd...), and you do all of this through text descriptions and commands. There are no animated battlers hacking it out, no sprites navigating a landscape. The only map is the map that lets you decide, "Left, right, forward, or back..."

Music: Music is for flavor anyway, just like the graphic design. Try playing the original Portal, another text based adventure, but simulates a computer network for you to navigate with the help of the AI, Homer, in your efforts to discover what happened to the human race while you were in space. I'm sure music would go quite well with the parts when you're accessing different parts of the World Network, but there's not. Most video games Portal's age don't have music anyway.

YES, SVIEL! Gameplay is the essential. Without, there's no point for there to be a game. You don't need the story, or the music, or the maps. What you need is the challenge, and the puzzle. You can say a fighting game isn't a puzzle, but you're not actually doing martial arts. You are pressing the buttons on the controller in a pattern, as quickly as you might, that lets you beat the AI, which constantly changes and adapts to that pattern. This is what makes a game. All of the other stuff is simply added to the game to make it more attractive to the consumer. When someone is actually telling a good story in the game, you have a medium that you are engaging on multiple levels. It becomes more than a game.

In order of priority for me:

Characterisation - Strong characters can make for strong storylines, or vice versa.

Storyline/World-building - A well-developed game world for the player to romp around in can be an engrossing experience. Nothing puts me off more than a flat, boring game world with equally bland NPCs. Lore, legends and your game's mythology is the icing on the cake.

Gameplay/Duration - Obvious. You NEED this.

Music/SFX - Sets the mood and scene. You do want to hear the sound of the ocean on an island map ( near the ocean, anyway ), or the soft pitter-patter of rain while strolling through a rainy forest. Just makes it that much more believable.

Visuals - For someone who likes mapping, suprisingly, this is actually at the bottom of my priority list, since I have no problem making things look pretty. ^^ But aesthetics are still pretty important.

author=LockeZ
For some reason I have a really hard time imagining you even tolerating Dark Souls, Liberty, much less really having fun with it.

Well, I have to admit, it didn't seem like the kind of game I'd play but my brother got a copy and he, my cousin and I traded off, laughing at each other over stupid deaths and the like. (We even made a competition out of seeing how long we could go without dying and seeing if we could defeat the bosses in a single life. Most often the answer was a resounding no, but it was fun. ^.^)

I guess playing with others helped. I was actually pretty lucky a number of times (so much so that my cousin kept complaining that I had magic luck powers) and hey, exploration! We all know how I am when it comes to that~

I mean, it's not one of my favourite games but I did quite enjoy it as something a bit different to my usual fare. I'm planning to get Dark Souls II when I have some spare cash lying around, though I'll probably play it mostly with my cousin and brother so we can trade off when it gets too frustrating. ^.^


I agree with Rya that duration is no precursor to fabulous RPG. I still maintain that one of my favourite RM games was a 5 minute game about a butterfly (that I still don't know the name of but am sure was created for one of the birthday events).

Oh, and lockeZ don't forget the gameplay of Child of Light. Graphics and atmosphere (it's not enough to just have graphics! FFXII has graphics and some would say little else and look how beloved that game isn't (I don't mind it myself but I'm quirky like that)) can go a long way in making a game pull you in. The gameplay in Child of Light was great - jumping around, flying and floating through the air was all fun. I didn't mind the story, actually. It was simple but had a few moments where I was like "Wait, no, what?" and the use of rhyming couplets was interesting (I quite liked how quirky it was, actually, though some of the forced rhymes made me wince a little). And the sound was pretty neat too.

I forget what point I was going to make. I guess, make games you would want to play and hope that people out there enjoy the same thing you do. ^.^

The combat in Child of Light is absolutely terrible. It's probably the most basic, kindergarten RPG combat I've ever seen in a video game - it's as bad as the original Alter AILA. Flying around was pretty fun, though. But I suspect that's almost entirely because of the art and the environments you're exploring! Because if you take that away there's not much to it. It's basically like vanilla Kirby with no powers, not even suction, and all the enemies replaced by goombas.

So yeah, I feel like the designers of Child of Light really didn't feel like gameplay was a "must have" in their game at all. They just sort of left gameplay design out of their budget, and hoped that exploring the art would be interesting enough to make people keep playing. The catch is that: yes, they were right. It was enough even for a hardened soul like me.

The moral of the story is, if what you put in the game is good enough, you can leave out anything.



Regarding duration: I don't need my games to be long to have fun with them, but once I start having fun, I'm going to want the game to keep going. I don't want to stop playing a game I'm enjoying! You can always make a sequel though. Or just design it to have some replay value. Or just make the cut scenes skippable so I can invent my own replay value.

We need likes so I can like that whole post, LockeZ. (I agree about the actual battles in Child of Light. They were a bit too... light, I guess. I mean, they were okay but nothing ground-breaking. And while I liked the whole materiaequipping gems system, I did feel that they could have done more with it. Maybe their next game will do better? We can hope~)

Dunno, Child of Light's combat is actually highly rated by pretty many review websites, though I didn't like it too much either.

I'd disagree that it's the "most basic" battle system, though. It's basically Grandia's awesome battle system except that you can only have 2 characters and 3 enemies tops (compared to 4 characters and 8 enemies tops that Grandia has). The aspect of cancelling attacks when they get prepared and the ability to defend to prevent being cancelled is not very basic. Not to mention the added aspect that even Grandia didn't have that you can slow down certain monsters on the bar to get their turn exactly when you want them to get it (so that you can cancel it).

It's innovative, it just didn't work out too well for me (mostly because of the low character limit).

I don't really know how to answer this question. I appreciate certain things about certain types of games. Nothing is imperative by default.