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An RPG without some of the JRPG.
Feldschlacht IV- 05/28/2015 07:35 PM
- 9756 views
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CloseI can definitely see where you're coming from. I think lately I've fallen more in love with the mechanical side of the JRPG formula- the battles, the dungeon design, the exploration, all the unique systems that you could screw with. The genre has a lot of possibility that (in my honestly under-educated view) goes untapped. Playing through FF5 really opened my eyes to how raw and fun the JRPG experience can be from a mechanical standpoint, just like FF7 opened my eyes to how you could create strange and wonderful settings.
I guess for me, as a worldbuilding guy, it really comes down to the fact that I don't like the aesthetic side of the modern JRPG formula... and I don't like how formulaic things have become. I'm tired of teenage heroes, generic Male Swordsman/Female Mage archetypal protagonists, villains with flat and uninteresting "destroy reality" type motivations, and well, I've always been a little creeped out by moe stuff. (As a side note: this is sort of why I've gotten tired of Tales of games. They seem to be stuck in a loop of cope/pasting the same thing every time.)
Personally, when thinking about what king of RPGs I want to design, I'm most interested in taking players on a fun and memorable journey. I want to give people the chance to really get lost in the world. I think as long as I live I'll always remember games like FF7/9, Paper Mario, Oblivion, and Skyrim, simply because of the fact that I got so wound up in them.
I guess for me, as a worldbuilding guy, it really comes down to the fact that I don't like the aesthetic side of the modern JRPG formula... and I don't like how formulaic things have become. I'm tired of teenage heroes, generic Male Swordsman/Female Mage archetypal protagonists, villains with flat and uninteresting "destroy reality" type motivations, and well, I've always been a little creeped out by moe stuff. (As a side note: this is sort of why I've gotten tired of Tales of games. They seem to be stuck in a loop of cope/pasting the same thing every time.)
Personally, when thinking about what king of RPGs I want to design, I'm most interested in taking players on a fun and memorable journey. I want to give people the chance to really get lost in the world. I think as long as I live I'll always remember games like FF7/9, Paper Mario, Oblivion, and Skyrim, simply because of the fact that I got so wound up in them.
I've heard okay things about Tales of Vesperia (mostly from MOG himself) but Tales of the Abyss is the only Tales game I've played and enjoyed. It breaks itself down enough to be interesting, although I doubt I'll ever finish the 3DS port I bought because the first time I played on PS2 already took like seventy damn hours. There's a young girl in the party but Anise is great enough that I can overlook it. She's never sexualized (unless I missed something, I hope not though), and although she """"hits on"""" the guys a lot it's "you have money and I want that in my life" instead of "gimme your dick plzkthnx". Which is good, because I'd refuse to play the game otherwise. ...long paragraph aside, I like Abyss but not any of the other Tales games for the copy-paste reason you've stated. Also the character design is just AWFUL.
FF5 is my favorite Final Fantasy for a very good reason. I like FF13-2 and X-2 a lot for similar reasons. They're all jRPGS that focus on mechanics and not taking themselves seriously, instead just having a goofy time with over-the-top characters and nutty villains. Those're the kind of games that I personally want to make, even though sometimes I catch myself wanting to do DARK AND EDGY (I can't write, don't let me do DARK AND EDGY).
One jRPG that I 100% forgive for its teenage protagonist, "30-is-too-old" attitude and "destroy reality!!!!" villain is Grandia 3. The game is just SO FUN and has very solid mechanics in place with tough-but-fair bosses and dungeons. The settings start out mundane but get pretty ridiculous by the end, which fits because you're also summoning meteors and releasing the superubermegadragonblade and all that shit. I heartily recommend it, emulated or otherwise. (Also some of your rotating party members are the MC's mother and her boyfriend. So that's interesting?)
Summary of my opinion: I love the basic idea of the jrpg. A good jrpg core tends to be easier to understand and pick up than convoluted wrpgs (not that I dislike them, but they're harder to like), which allows you to then break and twist it in fun ways. After all, you can only break rules effectively after you've mastered them, and the jrpg core is easy but worthwhile to master. (I say "master" extremely vaguely.)
I keep thinking that I should make a very traditional DQ clone for practice with that core. I haven't decided yet. Maybe as a last hurrah for the RTP before I start doing some other stuff... I don't know, we'll see.
Fake edit/addendum in reply to MOG's OP: As much as I appreciate Matsuno (which is varying... I like FF12, but hate Tactics Ogre), I find running around the disasteriffic Mt. Gagazet tutorial dungeon in punk black mage outfits or going through the nutriculture complex in palumpolum to be more memorable and engaging. idk maybe i'm weird. obviously this is all subjective
FF5 is my favorite Final Fantasy for a very good reason. I like FF13-2 and X-2 a lot for similar reasons. They're all jRPGS that focus on mechanics and not taking themselves seriously, instead just having a goofy time with over-the-top characters and nutty villains. Those're the kind of games that I personally want to make, even though sometimes I catch myself wanting to do DARK AND EDGY (I can't write, don't let me do DARK AND EDGY).
One jRPG that I 100% forgive for its teenage protagonist, "30-is-too-old" attitude and "destroy reality!!!!" villain is Grandia 3. The game is just SO FUN and has very solid mechanics in place with tough-but-fair bosses and dungeons. The settings start out mundane but get pretty ridiculous by the end, which fits because you're also summoning meteors and releasing the superubermegadragonblade and all that shit. I heartily recommend it, emulated or otherwise. (Also some of your rotating party members are the MC's mother and her boyfriend. So that's interesting?)
Summary of my opinion: I love the basic idea of the jrpg. A good jrpg core tends to be easier to understand and pick up than convoluted wrpgs (not that I dislike them, but they're harder to like), which allows you to then break and twist it in fun ways. After all, you can only break rules effectively after you've mastered them, and the jrpg core is easy but worthwhile to master. (I say "master" extremely vaguely.)
I keep thinking that I should make a very traditional DQ clone for practice with that core. I haven't decided yet. Maybe as a last hurrah for the RTP before I start doing some other stuff... I don't know, we'll see.
Fake edit/addendum in reply to MOG's OP: As much as I appreciate Matsuno (which is varying... I like FF12, but hate Tactics Ogre), I find running around the disasteriffic Mt. Gagazet tutorial dungeon in punk black mage outfits or going through the nutriculture complex in palumpolum to be more memorable and engaging. idk maybe i'm weird. obviously this is all subjective
author=Pizza
I can definitely see where you're coming from. I think lately I've fallen more in love with the mechanical side of the JRPG formula- the battles, the dungeon design, the exploration, all the unique systems that you could screw with. The genre has a lot of possibility that (in my honestly under-educated view) goes untapped. Playing through FF5 really opened my eyes to how raw and fun the JRPG experience can be from a mechanical standpoint, just like FF7 opened my eyes to how you could create strange and wonderful settings.
I agree! I think one of the biggest hurdles in the way of a lot of JRPGs is there low difficulty. A lot of them come with super dope battle system ideas or gameplay innovations that never come to fruition because of how easy it is, outside of a few battles.
Final Fantasy VII with its Materia possibilities come to mind, and Breath of Fire IV is a big offender, with a vast collection of innovations to gameplay and battle that never really need exploring, because mostly everything drops dead with a few hits.
author=Craze
One jRPG that I 100% forgive for its teenage protagonist, "30-is-too-old" attitude and "destroy reality!!!!" villain is Grandia 3. The game is just SO FUN and has very solid mechanics in place with tough-but-fair bosses and dungeons. The settings start out mundane but get pretty ridiculous by the end, which fits because you're also summoning meteors and releasing the superubermegadragonblade and all that shit. I heartily recommend it, emulated or otherwise. (Also some of your rotating party members are the MC's mother and her boyfriend. So that's interesting?)
That's the one Grandia title I've never played, I'll have to give it a shot.
author=Craze
Fake edit/addendum in reply to MOG's OP: As much as I appreciate Matsuno (which is varying... I like FF12, but hate Tactics Ogre),
ELABORATE
Desertopa
775
JRPGs are mostly made with teenage boys as the primary market demographic, and every other group as a periphery demographic, and I think there are a lot of pervasive issues with the genre which are a consequence of that.
WRPGs, on the other hand, are primarily targeted at young adult men, but that doesn't mean they generally endear themselves to me more; as Craze already alluded to, trying to create a mature or edgy story you don't have the writing chops for is generally worse than not trying in the first place.
I think that a game made according to the conventions of WRPGs could be at least as good as any JRPGs out there. But none of my favorite games are WRPGs. Why? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are, like, fifty JRPGs for every WRPG out there. If there were as many people trying to come up with interesting variations on the WRPG formula, the best they'd come up with would probably be a lot more impressive.
I think Matsuno is a great writer, and I'd probably have enjoyed FFXII a lot more if he'd been the one to carry it to completion. But I haven't really liked the gameplay styles of anything he's done outside of collaboration with Square/Square-Enix. Tactics Ogre is one of a small number of games I own which I've never finished, or even gotten very far in, and that's all down to design rather than narrative.
WRPGs, on the other hand, are primarily targeted at young adult men, but that doesn't mean they generally endear themselves to me more; as Craze already alluded to, trying to create a mature or edgy story you don't have the writing chops for is generally worse than not trying in the first place.
I think that a game made according to the conventions of WRPGs could be at least as good as any JRPGs out there. But none of my favorite games are WRPGs. Why? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are, like, fifty JRPGs for every WRPG out there. If there were as many people trying to come up with interesting variations on the WRPG formula, the best they'd come up with would probably be a lot more impressive.
author=Craze
Fake edit/addendum in reply to MOG's OP: As much as I appreciate Matsuno (which is varying... I like FF12, but hate Tactics Ogre), I find running around the disasteriffic Mt. Gagazet tutorial dungeon in punk black mage outfits or going through the nutriculture complex in palumpolum to be more memorable and engaging. idk maybe i'm weird. obviously this is all subjective
I think Matsuno is a great writer, and I'd probably have enjoyed FFXII a lot more if he'd been the one to carry it to completion. But I haven't really liked the gameplay styles of anything he's done outside of collaboration with Square/Square-Enix. Tactics Ogre is one of a small number of games I own which I've never finished, or even gotten very far in, and that's all down to design rather than narrative.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I'm not opposed to JRPGs that don't take themselves seriously, but I think there's a serious lack of ones that do. Western RPGs are way more likely to have you fighting nothing but threatening enemies in realistic situations, instead of making every tenth enemy be a smiley-face slime and winning battles with the power of friendship. You would never see an enemy like Ultros in The Witcher 3. Bringing that kind of serious, straight-laced action/drama aesthetic over to a linear, story-driven, character-centric, cutscene-heavy game has a tremendous potential for storytelling, and that potential really has yet to be unlocked in a successful big-budget RPG. (A few games in other genres, like Metal Gear Solid and Alan Wake, actually do a better job.)
With regards to gameplay, yeah, almost everyone who enjoys these pixel art games has been playing video games for a long time, and has gotten pretty good at them. Making them easy doesn't make a lot of sense. Having an easy mode isn't a terrible idea, though, since I've discovered that many people just prefer their RPGs to be mindless.
With regards to gameplay, yeah, almost everyone who enjoys these pixel art games has been playing video games for a long time, and has gotten pretty good at them. Making them easy doesn't make a lot of sense. Having an easy mode isn't a terrible idea, though, since I've discovered that many people just prefer their RPGs to be mindless.
author=Desertopa
JRPGs are mostly made with teenage boys as the primary market demographic, and every other group as a periphery demographic, and I think there are a lot of pervasive issues with the genre which are a consequence of that.
I feel like...that wasn't always the case, or something??? I mean, yeah, it more or less has, but even then there seemed to be more distinction and focus on production and quality in the past at large. When I think of past titles like Xenogears/Saga, Breath of Fire III, Star Ocean 2, etc, sure, I enjoyed them as a teenager, but those titles seem to be fundamentally different than the very, very anime tropish games that saturated the market a few years afterwards. The aforementioned games may have beem marketed to teenage boys, sure, but they resonated to all ages. A lot of new JRPGs seem to be just for preteen shut ins or something.
Even games like Lunar, which absolutely were made with a relatively young audience in mind, they're lightyears away in production value, creator care, and quality from the carbon copy gaijin-moe JRPG that defined the genre until relatively recently. What was the cultural shift that turned Star Ocean 2 into Star Ocean 4?
The line of thought 'this genre was made for a younger audience' can be true, sure, but quality seems pretty objective across time. The oldschool animated X-Men series? I can still watch that, it's legitimately entertaining. The Disney animated movie Hercules is one of my favorite films, period. Something being out of your age audience is one thing, but some of the stark differences we see in JRPGs is something different.
(this isn't a bemoanment on the state of JRPGs. As I mentioned, I like the genre, and the genre itself is actually rising up in a good way as of late, and there have been good gems throughout the years.)
Feldschlacht IVauthor=PizzaI agree! I think one of the biggest hurdles in the way of a lot of JRPGs is there low difficulty. A lot of them come with super dope battle system ideas or gameplay innovations that never come to fruition because of how easy it is, outside of a few battles.
I can definitely see where you're coming from. I think lately I've fallen more in love with the mechanical side of the JRPG formula- the battles, the dungeon design, the exploration, all the unique systems that you could screw with. The genre has a lot of possibility that (in my honestly under-educated view) goes untapped. Playing through FF5 really opened my eyes to how raw and fun the JRPG experience can be from a mechanical standpoint, just like FF7 opened my eyes to how you could create strange and wonderful settings.
Final Fantasy VII with its Materia possibilities come to mind, and Breath of Fire IV is a big offender, with a vast collection of innovations to gameplay and battle that never really need exploring, because mostly everything drops dead with a few hits.
FF7 is definitely the chief offender. The Materia system was a pretty cool idea/evolution of Magicite, but nothing in the game is built around it. All the characters are complete blank slates who may as well be the same person (limit breaks and all) and with the exception of some bosses like Carry Armour or Demon Wall you could pretty much beat the entire game by just hitting Attack. I feel like if the characters had more defined class roles, there would be at least SOME amount of critical thought and strategy put into Materia loadout other than "this person has Heal, this person has Enemy Skill".
IMO, the biggest problem facing interesting battle systems is the fact that random encounters are on average designed to be completely throw-away. It seems that almost everything besides cutscenes and boss battles are treated like a begrudging obligation by the majority of RPG designers... Which is really sad. People need to start thinking of more engaging and interesting ways to let the player build their characters, gain EXP and shit.
Paper Mario 1/2 and Remnants of Isolation are really the only RPGs I can think of where I purposefully participated in battles because they were so fun and engaging. Even FF5 managed to be generally interesting with its combat, if only because of the absolutely brilliant job system- but the plentiful bosses are the real meat that keeps it afloat in the end.
Desertopa
775
author=Feldschlacht IVauthor=DesertopaI feel like...that wasn't always the case, or something??? I mean, yeah, it more or less has, but even then there seemed to be more distinction and focus on production and quality in the past at large. When I think of past titles like Xenogears/Saga, Breath of Fire III, Star Ocean 2, etc, sure, I enjoyed them as a teenager, but those titles seem to be fundamentally different than the very, very anime tropish games that saturated the market a few years afterwards. The aforementioned games may have beem marketed to teenage boys, sure, but they resonated to all ages. A lot of new JRPGs seem to be just for preteen shut ins or something.
JRPGs are mostly made with teenage boys as the primary market demographic, and every other group as a periphery demographic, and I think there are a lot of pervasive issues with the genre which are a consequence of that.
Even games like Lunar, which absolutely were made with a relatively young audience in mind, they're lightyears away in production value, creator care, and quality from the carbon copy gaijin-moe JRPG that defined the genre until relatively recently. What was the cultural shift that turned Star Ocean 2 into Star Ocean 4?
The line of thought 'this genre was made for a younger audience' can be true, sure, but quality seems pretty objective across time. The oldschool animated X-Men series? I can still watch that, it's legitimately entertaining. The Disney animated movie Hercules is one of my favorite films, period. Something being out of your age audience is one thing, but some of the stark differences we see in JRPGs is something different.
(this isn't a bemoanment on the state of JRPGs. As I mentioned, I like the genre, and the genre itself is actually rising up in a good way as of late, and there have been good gems throughout the years.)
Well, there were games without a lot of wide age group appeal in the earlier days too, but I think it's true that game designers have become a lot less willing to take risks or experiment than they used to be. The necessary man-hours to create a game at commercial standards have gone way up, and the industry seems to have responded by sticking more closely to formula. And the increase in graphical resources has given games something they can sell on even when the other elements are lackluster. In the old days, if you had a game with weak story and characters and unoriginal and tedious gameplay, you had a lousy game and nobody was likely to suspect otherwise. But with modern graphics, you can sell a game on flash and aesthetics, and convince plenty of buyers to take your game seriously. Selling games on moe appeal also might have been common years earlier if moe appeal were something you could easily achieve on SNES-PS1 hardware.
Feldschlacht IVCrazeELABORATE
Fake edit/addendum in reply to MOG's OP: As much as I appreciate Matsuno (which is varying... I like FF12, but hate Tactics Ogre),
let us cling together's menus make no sense and the only character names i remember are cateua and ravness because they are also in a mobile game i play daily. even though they don't even look like their namesakes... i couldn't tell you a thing about the story despite playing at least ten hours before selling it. also, worst crafting system in the history of gaming.
i think that i find srpgs way more interesting on paper than i do in execution. they're so slow and so arbitrary and they always have the worst character progression systems. it wasn't good in ff9 or a/a2, stop doing "wear your shitty old equiping for skillz" plz. the only traditional srpg i think i've ever beat is fe: awakening. so maybe that played into it a bit? but god are they slow
Feldschlacht IV
A lot of new JRPGs seem to be just for preteen shut ins or something.
stop making games about fucking people to make team members. please.
NTC3
5625
OP: I hear you, and that's part of the reason why I consider the "J" part to be more of a misnomer, because it attaches a lot of very Japanese cultural baggage to a set of mechanics that are as culture-agnostic as that of any other genre. Nihilo, the game I'm currently working on, might still have the protagonists in their early 20's, but the rest is being averted as much as possible at the moment, and there's a heavier emphasis on non-linearity that's closer to WRPG than JRPG.
Isn't that only like two game series, i.e. a drop in the ocean relative to JRPG genre? Sure, I know of a couple more games like that (Tokyo Jungle and The Deer God), but they're outside of JRPG genre and have animal protagonists, so I don't think that would count. Also, please don't make another DQ clone. We've got enough of those already.
Agree, except for the highlighted parts. The ability of our medium to provide genuine non-linearity in storytelling is a tremendous power that should never be underestimated. As I have said before and will say again, A Blurred Line has little to its name without those story branches that stayed in play for a long time. Of course, there's also the potential to misuse it until it backfires, i.e. Mass Effect 3. To me, the key is to make sure every choice ends up feeling authentic: i.e. to make it something the player can reasonably believe their character will do or say in a given situation, as opposed to something obviously contrived for its own sake.
Similarly, it's a very open question whether cutscenes are that important/necessary and whether or not games of this caliber were done before. After all, one of the reasons Half Life remains remembered for so long is because it was almost completely devoid of cutscenes. And in my country, at least, there's a significant sub-section of gaming culture that considers any games with a lot of cutscenes to be "interactive cinema" as a very derogatory term (and I don't just mean something like The Order: 1886 or Heavy Rain, but also The Walking Dead, Uncharted games or even Wolfenstein: New Order).) The same sub-culture absolutely venerates Planescape: Torment as the best RPG ever made. For reference, it was released in 2000 and obviously had few cutscenes, but provided 1.4 million words of writing, much of it through all the dialogue trees.
Firstly, the ratio is not as skewed as you think it is, although there were definitely more WRPGs made about 10-15 years ago than nowadays. Anyway, what in this context counts as "WRPG formula" and how far can a game stray from it before it's no longer a WRPG? Is it limited to the traditional high and dark fantasy stuff of The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Gothic, The Witcher, Two Worlds, Bound by Flame, Fable (more of a slasher but fine), Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, and Planescape: Torment? As you can see, that's already plenty of games with rather significant differences in between them: i.e. Pillars of Eternity has guns and Na'vi like races, while Gothic had one of the most complete day-night cycles ever made + free-running and stuff.
Then there's a whole post-apocalyptic subgenre: besides the universally known Fallout, there's the recently revived Wasteland plus a few older titles like The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. And of course, there are more than a few genre-benders like fully-Nordic The Banner Saga, Of Orcs and Men (made in France but is very linear and small-scale like real-time JRPGs), where humans are performing genocide on Orcs and you're playing as an Orc and Goblin, and last but not least, the legendary FPS/RPGs like Deus Ex series, Mass Effect and even S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Alpha Protocol. And of course, we can't forget the Knights of the Old Republic duology.
author=Craze
stop making games about fucking people to make team members. please.
Isn't that only like two game series, i.e. a drop in the ocean relative to JRPG genre? Sure, I know of a couple more games like that (Tokyo Jungle and The Deer God), but they're outside of JRPG genre and have animal protagonists, so I don't think that would count. Also, please don't make another DQ clone. We've got enough of those already.
author=LockeZ
I'm not opposed to JRPGs that don't take themselves seriously, but I think there's a serious lack of ones that do. Western RPGs are way more likely to have you fighting nothing but threatening enemies in realistic situations, instead of making every tenth enemy be a smiley-face slime and winning battles with the power of friendship. You would never see an enemy like Ultros in The Witcher 3. Bringing that kind of serious, straight-laced action/drama aesthetic over to a linear, story-driven, character-centric, cutscene-heavy game has a tremendous potential for storytelling, and that potential really has yet to be unlocked in a successful big-budget RPG. (A few games in other genres, like Metal Gear Solid and Alan Wake, actually do a better job.)
Agree, except for the highlighted parts. The ability of our medium to provide genuine non-linearity in storytelling is a tremendous power that should never be underestimated. As I have said before and will say again, A Blurred Line has little to its name without those story branches that stayed in play for a long time. Of course, there's also the potential to misuse it until it backfires, i.e. Mass Effect 3. To me, the key is to make sure every choice ends up feeling authentic: i.e. to make it something the player can reasonably believe their character will do or say in a given situation, as opposed to something obviously contrived for its own sake.
Similarly, it's a very open question whether cutscenes are that important/necessary and whether or not games of this caliber were done before. After all, one of the reasons Half Life remains remembered for so long is because it was almost completely devoid of cutscenes. And in my country, at least, there's a significant sub-section of gaming culture that considers any games with a lot of cutscenes to be "interactive cinema" as a very derogatory term (and I don't just mean something like The Order: 1886 or Heavy Rain, but also The Walking Dead, Uncharted games or even Wolfenstein: New Order).) The same sub-culture absolutely venerates Planescape: Torment as the best RPG ever made. For reference, it was released in 2000 and obviously had few cutscenes, but provided 1.4 million words of writing, much of it through all the dialogue trees.
author=Desertopa
I think that a game made according to the conventions of WRPGs could be at least as good as any JRPGs out there. But none of my favorite games are WRPGs. Why? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are, like, fifty JRPGs for every WRPG out there. If there were as many people trying to come up with interesting variations on the WRPG formula, the best they'd come up with would probably be a lot more impressive.
Firstly, the ratio is not as skewed as you think it is, although there were definitely more WRPGs made about 10-15 years ago than nowadays. Anyway, what in this context counts as "WRPG formula" and how far can a game stray from it before it's no longer a WRPG? Is it limited to the traditional high and dark fantasy stuff of The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Gothic, The Witcher, Two Worlds, Bound by Flame, Fable (more of a slasher but fine), Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, and Planescape: Torment? As you can see, that's already plenty of games with rather significant differences in between them: i.e. Pillars of Eternity has guns and Na'vi like races, while Gothic had one of the most complete day-night cycles ever made + free-running and stuff.
Then there's a whole post-apocalyptic subgenre: besides the universally known Fallout, there's the recently revived Wasteland plus a few older titles like The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. And of course, there are more than a few genre-benders like fully-Nordic The Banner Saga, Of Orcs and Men (made in France but is very linear and small-scale like real-time JRPGs), where humans are performing genocide on Orcs and you're playing as an Orc and Goblin, and last but not least, the legendary FPS/RPGs like Deus Ex series, Mass Effect and even S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Alpha Protocol. And of course, we can't forget the Knights of the Old Republic duology.
The Banner Saga is a bit odd because the interactive portions are very wrpg-like but the gameplay is more like Disgaea than Baldur's Gate.
Also there are no games on this site that I've found that are like DQ3 so idk man i don't think i agree re: there being too many DQ clones. the 2k3 golden era wanted to be ff6 and/or bof4, not dragon quest
Also there are no games on this site that I've found that are like DQ3 so idk man i don't think i agree re: there being too many DQ clones. the 2k3 golden era wanted to be ff6 and/or bof4, not dragon quest
author=Craze
let us cling together's menus make no sense and the only character names i remember are cateua and ravness because they are also in a mobile game i play daily. even though they don't even look like their namesakes... i couldn't tell you a thing about the story despite playing at least ten hours before selling it. also, worst crafting system in the history of gaming.
I think the most interesting part of Matsuno's approach to TO's story is also sort of its casualty; it's source. One of the most interesting parts about Matsuno is that he's a history buff, and his plots draw from real life events; many people know that FFT was drawn from the real life War of the Roses, but not very many people know that TO's inspiration was the Yugoslav War.
I think this approach gives his stories a real, human touch that many JRPGs lack in their conflicts, instead of one side hating each other 'just because' and 'war', Tactics Ogre brings into light interesting themes; devotion to homeland, racial tension, and even heavy shit like ethnic cleansing, actual shit that went down during the Yugoslav War. However, like the real Bosnian conflicts, it was really, really complicated, and that translated into its plot as well. It's um...hard to follow sometimes.
Definitely can't defend some of its design choices though, that level progression and crafting system, good lord.
author=PizzaFeldschlacht IVFF7 is definitely the chief offender. The Materia system was a pretty cool idea/evolution of Magicite, but nothing in the game is built around it. All the characters are complete blank slates who may as well be the same person (limit breaks and all) and with the exception of some bosses like Carry Armour or Demon Wall you could pretty much beat the entire game by just hitting Attack. I feel like if the characters had more defined class roles, there would be at least SOME amount of critical thought and strategy put into Materia loadout other than "this person has Heal, this person has Enemy Skill".author=PizzaI agree! I think one of the biggest hurdles in the way of a lot of JRPGs is there low difficulty. A lot of them come with super dope battle system ideas or gameplay innovations that never come to fruition because of how easy it is, outside of a few battles.
I can definitely see where you're coming from. I think lately I've fallen more in love with the mechanical side of the JRPG formula- the battles, the dungeon design, the exploration, all the unique systems that you could screw with. The genre has a lot of possibility that (in my honestly under-educated view) goes untapped. Playing through FF5 really opened my eyes to how raw and fun the JRPG experience can be from a mechanical standpoint, just like FF7 opened my eyes to how you could create strange and wonderful settings.
Final Fantasy VII with its Materia possibilities come to mind, and Breath of Fire IV is a big offender, with a vast collection of innovations to gameplay and battle that never really need exploring, because mostly everything drops dead with a few hits.
IMO, the biggest problem facing interesting battle systems is the fact that random encounters are on average designed to be completely throw-away. It seems that almost everything besides cutscenes and boss battles are treated like a begrudging obligation by the majority of RPG designers... Which is really sad. People need to start thinking of more engaging and interesting ways to let the player build their characters, gain EXP and shit.
Paper Mario 1/2 and Remnants of Isolation are really the only RPGs I can think of where I purposefully participated in battles because they were so fun and engaging. Even FF5 managed to be generally interesting with its combat, if only because of the absolutely brilliant job system- but the plentiful bosses are the real meat that keeps it afloat in the end.
I dunno - I find bosses and over-wrought battles to be a chore than a challenge, as they almost always devolve into "guess the developers narrow intentions for this guy!" I like making my parties capable of handling most anything, and bosses come across a lot of the times as "exploit this single facet of the battle system!" and are unsatisfying.
Except for the final boss, which, due to the fact that typically designers reason that any strategy that got the player to the end shouldn't be punished, thus all strategies and builds will work (though some may be more viable than others). And I like that more.
I guess what I am saying is I like waves of mindless drones because it validates the way that I like to play and build parties/characters in RPGs.
author=Crazespeak fer yerself!
The Banner Saga is a bit odd because the interactive portions are very wrpg-like but the gameplay is more like Disgaea than Baldur's Gate.
Also there are no games on this site that I've found that are like DQ3 so idk man i don't think i agree re: there being too many DQ clones. the 2k3 golden era wanted to be ff6 and/or bof4, not dragon quest
NTC3
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Yeah, when I saw the words "DQ3 clone", Hero's Realm was actually the first game that came to mind. It's also symbolic that I still haven't played it yet: I'm sure it's awesome and fun and what not, but I can't quite find the energy for another retro excuse story for the sake of an excuse story. The way I see it, RPG Maker is already retro relative to the rest of gaming out there, so copying the storytelling of the 90's is a step too far.
I do get your point about bad serious storytelling being a lot worse than excuse/non-serious kind of writing, though. I think a good example here is Guild Raider!: that game didn't take itself seriously, had very enjoyable and light-hearted writing and its premise might not be wholly original, but was certainly a lot fresher than typical "retro" fare. It would be awesome if you could make something like that.
I do get your point about bad serious storytelling being a lot worse than excuse/non-serious kind of writing, though. I think a good example here is Guild Raider!: that game didn't take itself seriously, had very enjoyable and light-hearted writing and its premise might not be wholly original, but was certainly a lot fresher than typical "retro" fare. It would be awesome if you could make something like that.
author=Craze
stop making games about fucking people to make team members. please.
Pardon me for going on a tangent, but I'm always for more romance in RPGs. However, I'm guessing these are the same shallow fanservice harem games that never actually develop realistic mature relationships or anything worthwhile.
If you've got a game with a name like "Conception," I can imagine cool things you could do with that. Like falling in love with a character, eventually having a kid, and raising them. Maybe kinda like Dragon Quest 5 or something. But I'm guessing it's nothing that neat in reality.
Oh, do you think that Hero's Realm takes itself seriously?
E:
I stopped playing jRPGs around 1997 (when I got into RTSs like StarCraft and C&C, and wRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and KOTOR). My exposure to jRPGs kind of died when the N64 didn't get ANY rpgs, and I didn't have a PS1 or PS2. So I feel like I completely missed the bulk of the "gaijin-moe" phase of jRPGs. My friend keeps telling me that I missed the golden age of jRPGs, but I look at all of the animesque games from that era and I'm like "Actually, I am not sure if I missed anything worthwhile".
So I basically went from DQ1-4 on the NES, to FF2/3 (IV/VI) and CT on the SNES, straight to BG, Diablo, and KOTOR, and then discovering RPG Maker in earnest in 2002, to inform you where my preferences and RPG sensibilities come from.
E2:
I have no idea if I am contributing anything to this discussion.
E:
I stopped playing jRPGs around 1997 (when I got into RTSs like StarCraft and C&C, and wRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and KOTOR). My exposure to jRPGs kind of died when the N64 didn't get ANY rpgs, and I didn't have a PS1 or PS2. So I feel like I completely missed the bulk of the "gaijin-moe" phase of jRPGs. My friend keeps telling me that I missed the golden age of jRPGs, but I look at all of the animesque games from that era and I'm like "Actually, I am not sure if I missed anything worthwhile".
So I basically went from DQ1-4 on the NES, to FF2/3 (IV/VI) and CT on the SNES, straight to BG, Diablo, and KOTOR, and then discovering RPG Maker in earnest in 2002, to inform you where my preferences and RPG sensibilities come from.
E2:
I have no idea if I am contributing anything to this discussion.
NTC3
Yeah, when I saw the words "DQ3 clone", Hero's Realm was actually the first game that came to mind.
HR is more a mix of FF5 and DQ4 than DQ3. If you've played DQ9, DQ3 is a lot more like that -- not a lot of hand-holding, just "here's a world, go figure it out and find the things".
NTC3
I do get your point about bad serious storytelling being a lot worse than excuse/non-serious kind of writing, though. I think a good example here is Guild Raider!: that game didn't take itself seriously, had very enjoyable and light-hearted writing and its premise might not be wholly original, but was certainly a lot fresher than typical "retro" fare. It would be awesome if you could make something like that.
I don't think there's any DQ game that takes itself seriously. One of the primary antagonists for DQ8, the longest and most epic in the non-MMO series, is a flying greyhound.
kentona, what's BQ?
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author=kentona
Oh, do you think that Hero's Realm takes itself seriously?
Course not! It's just doesn't seem different enough to be a priority for me at this point. It's also one of the most successful games on here as testament to your hard work, and for me, part of the fun has always been to play the less well-known stuff and then review it/get it onto TVTropes.
author=unityauthor=CrazePardon me for going on a tangent, but I'm always for more romance in RPGs. However, I'm guessing these are the same shallow fanservice harem games that never actually develop realistic mature relationships or anything worthwhile.
stop making games about fucking people to make team members. please.
If you've got a game with a name like "Conception," I can imagine cool things you could do with that. Like falling in love with a character, eventually having a kid, and raising them. Maybe kinda like Dragon Quest 5 or something. But I'm guessing it's nothing that neat in reality.
From what I heard, Conception is pretty much the exact kind of trashy stuff you're talking about: just scrolling through these review quotes should give a pretty good idea. Agarest has a cool name, but is unfortunately not too different. (I hope you can see that I've included two links in here.)
It's a pity, because I at first confused it with another recent game that had no main character, with the player being an abstract force that guides an entire clan of people from afar. Thus, the characters marrying each other and their children becoming new warriors was part of the whole generation theme, as all your starting characters eventually grew old and died, getting their own gravestones with the record of their achievements. Hence, leaving offspring was vital for every character before they died, and it thus took on a whole new meaning. Unfortunately, I completely forgot what that was called.
