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Guardian Frontier
An RPG with classic-style gameplay and a non-classic premise, inspired by the history of exploration and colonialism of the 19th century.
An RPG with classic-style gameplay and a non-classic premise, inspired by the history of exploration and colonialism of the 19th century.
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How the Heck do you Design a Town?
Reminds me of a bit from this Final Fantasy XII review.
Personally, I think that divorcing towns from the whole "buying new weapons, armor, and items" deal could be a good idea, since absent the obvious mechanical excuse, the game designer is practically forced to find something more interesting to do with the towns.
The rumours are indeed true and Vaan is the least plot-important playable character. So far that's established. However, Vaan fills a vital role in the party that I can't remember any other character in any Final Fantasy I've played (i.e. 1-10) filling so obviously. Vaan is the official party bitch.
I can just imagine a usual party meeting in the back room of a Rabanastre tavern:
Basch: Vayne gathers his forces. We must hurry and find a way to stop him, else all is lost.
Ashe: Let us leave at once for the mystical temple and seek the mystical stone.
Balthier: Good thinking, but we should go along the coast. The empire's troops won't be looking for us there.
Vaan: Coast? We're going to the beach? Awesome, I'm packing my swimming trunks!
Silence.
Balthier: Vaan. Vaan, why don't you go out and buy us a few new suits of armour? A few hundred potions and remedies, too. Be so kind, would you? Oh, and pick up my shirts from the laundromat while you're out, there's a dear.
At which point you, the player, take over and guide Vaan through an exciting city adventure full of calculating prizes and haggling with merchants. This is the reason you only ever play as Vaan inside cities.
Personally, I think that divorcing towns from the whole "buying new weapons, armor, and items" deal could be a good idea, since absent the obvious mechanical excuse, the game designer is practically forced to find something more interesting to do with the towns.
Breath Of Fire 3 is awesome!!!!!!
I don't think Dragon Quarter was a bad game. It was definitely a bad Breath of Fire sequel. It was an interesting gameplay experiment, and it was engaging enough that I at least bothered to play through it multiple times. I got a 1/4 D-ratio without ever needing a guide, which I appreciated, since I feel like too many games rely on hidden stuff on the presumption that players who want completion will just look stuff up online. But it didn't share the sort of elements that gave the other installments in the series their charm, so Capcom really had no reason to expect that people buying on the strength of Breath of Fire's reputation would be looking for the sort of experience it offered.
Tri-Ace
You can certainly do an engaging story without much dialogue. It's better to do a little well than a lot badly. And if a game has boring writing, then the less of it the player has to sit through, the better. But the same is true of anything else you can possibly put into a game; if it's done badly, the audience won't like it.
Some writers and artists can do a lot with a little, but expressive minimalism is a skill, not a shortcut. And in general, audiences do want to see some kind of story and characterization, not just spectacle, which is why even directors who're widely regarded as making mindless action-fests never actually make movies like "90 Minutes of a Kung Fu Guy Beating People Up Nonstop," or "2013 Best Explosions Compendium."
Some writers and artists can do a lot with a little, but expressive minimalism is a skill, not a shortcut. And in general, audiences do want to see some kind of story and characterization, not just spectacle, which is why even directors who're widely regarded as making mindless action-fests never actually make movies like "90 Minutes of a Kung Fu Guy Beating People Up Nonstop," or "2013 Best Explosions Compendium."
Land of Dreams Review
It couldn't hurt to give it a try. I actually had quite a bit of fun with it, since I was writing up my thoughts on it for the review and discussing it with my friends as I went.
Tri-Ace
You can include a much greater volume of information in an encyclopedia or something than you can integrate organically through conversation and such, but you can go a long way to developing an interesting setting using allusion rather than flat discussion of the facts, and it'll usually make for a more interesting read.
Final Fantasy XII's Clan Primer could have been a lot worse- the way it presented setting information through framing devices such as book exerpts, letters, and other snippets which suggested a more developed context, made it more interesting than if the whole thing had been a simple encyclopedia handing you information about the setting directly. But the gameplay conditions for accessing the full breadth of its content were obnoxious, its relation with the game's bazaar system was unintuitive and unfair, and there's no in-game logic that connects the actions you perform to access the information (killing monsters) with the information you receive. So it's step forward, step back relative to a flat encyclopedia presentation.
If you're creative about it, you can usually find other ways to integrate large amounts of information into a game for a player to investigate at their discretion, without making it feel too forced.
Here's an example of a mechanism I came up with some time ago. The main character has several mentors, friends and associates from his backstory who he still keeps in touch with, and the "saving the game" mechanism is actually sending letters to various figures from his life about what he's been doing in the course of the game. As you progress through the story, if you bother to pick them up, you'll occasionally receive letters back from the people he's written to, and if the player chooses to read them, they'll reveal more information about the setting and the character's backstory.
Final Fantasy XII's Clan Primer could have been a lot worse- the way it presented setting information through framing devices such as book exerpts, letters, and other snippets which suggested a more developed context, made it more interesting than if the whole thing had been a simple encyclopedia handing you information about the setting directly. But the gameplay conditions for accessing the full breadth of its content were obnoxious, its relation with the game's bazaar system was unintuitive and unfair, and there's no in-game logic that connects the actions you perform to access the information (killing monsters) with the information you receive. So it's step forward, step back relative to a flat encyclopedia presentation.
If you're creative about it, you can usually find other ways to integrate large amounts of information into a game for a player to investigate at their discretion, without making it feel too forced.
Here's an example of a mechanism I came up with some time ago. The main character has several mentors, friends and associates from his backstory who he still keeps in touch with, and the "saving the game" mechanism is actually sending letters to various figures from his life about what he's been doing in the course of the game. As you progress through the story, if you bother to pick them up, you'll occasionally receive letters back from the people he's written to, and if the player chooses to read them, they'll reveal more information about the setting and the character's backstory.
Tri-Ace
author=RyaReisender
Do you dislike "extreme" plot-twists in general?
I love games (and movies) that end with a complete surprise.
Also I'm pretty sure that all Star Ocean games have private actions. Just that you didn't have to bother to activate the manually in 3 (they are still called PAs in the tutorials). Though as mentioned earlier I hate "side" dialogues, so I'd prefer if they just removed towns in RPGs altogether (that's why I liked FFXIII).
It's not that the twist was "extreme," it was that it was a) unforeshadowed, b) didn't mesh well with the earlier tone or themes, and c) trivialized the earlier parts of the conflict. You can do "extreme" plot twists while avoiding all of these things, and doing any one of them is a serious mark against a plot twist. Doing all of them at once is just absurd.
Star Ocean 3 had "private actions," but the fact that when you enter towns, you'll find your party members wandering around, and once in a blue moon you'll be presented with a dialogue choice, doesn't equate to the private action system of the previous game. Rather than interacting one on one with your party members, your relationship values are overwhelmingly determined by choices you make in other parts of the game, even ones made when your other party members aren't there, or you haven't even met them yet. The effects of these choices on character relations are totally unintuitive, and never properly explained in the game; would you guess on your own, for instance, that your behavior in the battle simulation at the beginning of the game will affect your relationships with all the other characters in the game, even though you've only met Sophia so far?
If you hate "side dialogues," I have a hard time understanding why you'd follow RPGs in particular, especially since you've also said that you hate resource management strategy and prefer systems where characters are automatically fully healed at the end of battle. I have to wonder if maybe you're just in it for the mechanical character growth. But as far as I'm concerned, that sort of thing is meaningless when divorced from the context of an engaging story. Whether it has to be presented through "towns" is another matter, but taking away player directed exploration of the environment and organic exposition through character interaction is, in my opinion, one of the worst things you can possibly do with an RPG.
In theory, systems like Star Ocean 3's encyclopedia or Final Fantasy XIII's datalog might be a handy way to offer setting related exposition to those who enjoy it, and keep those unwieldy amounts of info away from players who don't care for that sort of thing. But in practice, this is just a really crappy way to develop a setting. It's pretty much the ultimate violation of the "show, don't tell" maxim, and replaces organic exploration of a setting with bland infodumps. It's like the difference between taking a trip to Paris, and reading Paris's wikipedia article.
Land of Dreams Review
I'm glad that you've accepted the review with such a positive outlook. I was hesitant to take the tone I did, since I had no desire to offend you personally, and I'd hate to belittle someone over something they produced as part of a learning experience. But in the end I found that playing and reviewing the game was simply much more fun when I gave free rein to my urge to mock, and felt that a more polite description of the content would have been less fun to read.
Best of luck finishing Amulet of Fate, and I hope that when the time comes, I can give it a much more favorable review.
Best of luck finishing Amulet of Fate, and I hope that when the time comes, I can give it a much more favorable review.
The Logomancer
I've just started playing this, and since I've committed to turning in a review of it for Reviewrim, you're pretty much guaranteed to get a review out of me in a matter of days.
I'm a bit confused by the content in one of the puzzles though, and I'm afraid I may have inadvertently engaged in a bit of sequence breaking. I decided to explore the area a bit before talking to Glenton, and picked up the Louder Than Words quest. After checking around town, I went to the Water Spine Cavern, and investigated the puzzle there. I figured from the content of the drawings that Udumo must be behind them, but I also assumed that given that all the information necessary to solve the puzzle was inside the cave, it couldn't hurt to solve it now even if I didn't have the background information to know why it was there. I was able to open the safe (really interesting puzzle, by the way,) but when I did so, Ardus said something about Udumo's journal which... I don't think I've actually investigated the context for yet. And my Quest Log now marks "Ask Glenton about Udumo" and a few subsequent objectives as completed,even though I never did so.
Also, while I was able to successfully complete the puzzle, so I think that I understand it, one of the hints in the dreamscape seems to me to be incorrect. The note with what's supposed to be a drawing of 1098 appears to actually depict 13,300 in base 5, or 1075. The way I figure, 1098 ought to look like this.
I'm a bit confused by the content in one of the puzzles though, and I'm afraid I may have inadvertently engaged in a bit of sequence breaking. I decided to explore the area a bit before talking to Glenton, and picked up the Louder Than Words quest. After checking around town, I went to the Water Spine Cavern, and investigated the puzzle there. I figured from the content of the drawings that Udumo must be behind them, but I also assumed that given that all the information necessary to solve the puzzle was inside the cave, it couldn't hurt to solve it now even if I didn't have the background information to know why it was there. I was able to open the safe (really interesting puzzle, by the way,) but when I did so, Ardus said something about Udumo's journal which... I don't think I've actually investigated the context for yet. And my Quest Log now marks "Ask Glenton about Udumo" and a few subsequent objectives as completed,even though I never did so.
Also, while I was able to successfully complete the puzzle, so I think that I understand it, one of the hints in the dreamscape seems to me to be incorrect. The note with what's supposed to be a drawing of 1098 appears to actually depict 13,300 in base 5, or 1075. The way I figure, 1098 ought to look like this.
Game elements you haven't seen before, but want to
author=LockeZ
I keep wanting to make a game where battles play out like an RPG battle, but there's no enemy. And no combat. It's not a fighting game. Maybe some kind of performance, like a concert, or even a sermon.
Instead of the goal being to reduce the enemy's HP to zero you'd have some other bar you had to reduce to zero or fill to 100 in order to win each "battle." Like maybe you have to increase the crowd's enthusiasm to 100% to win, but if their attention decreases to 0% or you run out of time points, you lose.
Instead of different enemies you'd have different situations. The time of year, the location, the makeup of the crowd, and other factors would cause the crowd to have different stats, which affect what they do and how effective it is, and how effective your skills are on them. They might have elemental resistances, cause various events to occur during the performance, etc, and you'd have a wide variety of skills to deal with different situations. Your skills would cost some equivalent of MP and have cooldowns and cause status effects and everything else you'd expect from an RPG - the meaning of everything would be totally different but deep down it would very much be an RPG.
For example, if I were doing a game that used this system for preaching sermons, where you have to increase their enthusiasm to 100 before their attention decreases to 0:
- You use Classical Hymn (puts 5-15% of crowd into "worship" status, tripling their vulnerability to all skills) (tradition elemental) (costs 5 music points and 7 time)
- Crowd uses Speak in Tongues! Crowd is now vulnerable to worship status but resists tradition!
- You use Contemporary Christian Music (puts 4-12% of crowd into "worship" status, tripling their vulnerability to all skills) (enthusiasm power: 5) (uplifting elemental) (costs 8 music points and 5 time)
- Crowd uses Lift Up Hands! Your next skill is super-effective!
- You use Gospel Solo (uplifting elemental) (enthusiasm power: 15) (costs 20 music points and 5 time) (once per battle).
- Crowd is getting edgy! Attention drops by 10. Music effectiveness halved for remainder of battle!
- You use Illustrative Story: Humor (restores 30 attention) (casual elemental) (diminishing results if used multiple times per sermon) (costs 3 time)
- A baby is crying! Crowd attention and enthusiasm drop by 5.
- You use Opening Prayer (sacrifice 10 attention to double power of all actions except illustrations for 5 rounds) (costs 1 time) (lose 4 enthusiasm if at least 30 time has been used) (usable once per sermon)
and so on and so forth
I've actually just started playing a game which does something very similar to this, and it's pretty good so far. I'm planning to submit a review of it for Reviewrim, so I should have more to say about it soon.
Tri-Ace
author=RyaReisender
I have a quite different opinion about that than most of you seem. I think tri-Ace has ALWAYS been bad with stories and characters and I personally don't really care much about story (which might seem strange because my main genre is RPGs), in fact in most RPGs I don't even read the dialogues, I just skip through them most of the time unless it seems that there is some important info in the text (like where to go next).
For the Star Ocean series, I actually think Star Ocean 3 had the best story of all. Okay the first half (except the very beginning) was a bit disappointing because it wasn't really much sci-fi and it stretched out for too long without anything really happening but the second half was amazing. The plot actually fits very nicely to my own "religion", so I was pretty amazed that tri-Ace came up with something similar.
Really? I suppose if you feel like it's a reflection of your own personal "religion," it might feel cool to see it in a game, but I honestly consider the latter part of Star Ocean 3 to have the worst plot twist of any commercial game I've ever encountered. I just finished reviewing a game from this site which has an even worse one (a particularly obnoxious variation of All Just A Dream,) but until the very end, where that game managed to screw up its twist even further, all I could think was "Oh god, this is almost as bad as Star Ocean 3!"
Not only is it a Shocking Swerve of high degree, it manages to trivialize the conflicts of both of the previous games.
Star Ocean 2 really didn't live up to its potential story-wise, considering how distinct from generic fantasy RPGs it could have been with its premise, but the twist you get if you pursue the sidequest with the secret files in Nede's library is actually pretty interesting. Of course, making the most interesting twist on the main conflict of the game so easily missable is itself a pretty substantial design flaw. But what I really liked Star Ocean 2 for was the Private Action system, which I think was a more interesting mechanism for developing characters' relationships than I've seen implemented in other games. That and game's complex skill and crafting systems. That Star Ocean 3 did away with both of those things counted heavily against it in my book.
In terms of dialogue quality, I actually think that Star Ocean 3 was actually a significant step forward over 2, or at least, 3's translation was a step forward over 2's translation. But I didn't actually like nearly any of the characters, so it was one step forward, two steps back.
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