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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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The Elder Scribes of RMN: Reviewrim
Planning to review The Logomancer. Hopefully this will give me a better shot at getting a new positive review into the pool.
ITOSHI KOKORO
I was confused by your username at first, since I thought it was a reference to the video game company Taito (mostly involved in arcade games, but I'll always remember it fondly for the Lufia RPGs on the SNES.)
I'm assuming Miyuki Taito is your real name, but when you use your surname alone as a username, is it by any chance a reference to that company?
I'm assuming Miyuki Taito is your real name, but when you use your surname alone as a username, is it by any chance a reference to that company?
The Elder Scribes of RMN: Reviewrim
I'm going for quantity of review over quantity of reviews. If my submission for Land of Dreams isn't rejected for being too goddamn long, its total wordcount will be roughly equal to Deckiller's seven currently-accepted reviews combined.
...I have a lot of things to say about that game.
...I have a lot of things to say about that game.
Making Stats Matter More (than just hitting shit real hard).
While the topic might be in the wrong subforum (I already posted in it, so I'm also at fault for not taking notice of that,) I think that the subject of this thread is fairly different from the one you just made. This one is mostly about stats having interesting gameplay effects beyond their conventional applications in combat, while I took your topic to be more about interesting ways of implementing stats' direct application to combat.
Parameters
I'll give an example of a game whose parameters and formulas made a good impression on me, which is unlikely to make it into this discussion otherwise.
Kamidori Alchemy Meister is a visual novel/strategy RPG hybrid, much heavier on gameplay than most hybrid visual novels. The game contains explicit sexual content (I actually personally believe that explicit sexual content can have a legitimate place in works of artistic merit, but the sexual content in Kamidori Alchemy Meister tends heavily towards the gratuitous.) On the gameplay side though, it's exceptionally well devised, and uses an unusually simple system which actually turns out to be remarkably well balanced and suited to the sorts of challenges the game presents.
Physical attacks are determined by the formula of ATK-DEF, where the defender's defense power is simply subtracted directly from the attacker's attack power. An attacker with 50 attack power hitting an enemy with 25 defense will do 25 damage, an attacker with 100 attack power hitting an enemy with 25 defense will do 75 damage. There is no randomization, and the results are totally predictable in advance of each move. Most other combat formulas are similarly simple. There are various multipliers or dividers involved when dealing with elemental weaknesses or affinities and such, but again, these are all simple and deterministic, and their results can be predicted in advance.
On the other hand, once you progress beyond the early stages where you're still picking up the game principles, there tend to be enough moving parts on a battlefield that it's difficult to extend precise predictions more than a few moves in ahead. Maps are often extensive, and unexplored portions are hidden from view, including enemies within that space, so new threats are often produced unpredictably over the course of a battle. Even though you can usually determine the precise immediate consequences of a move, gameplay still tends to revolve around calculated risk. Moves whose immediate consequences aren't entirely predictable don't come into play until much later in the game, and add another element to the risk management, where you have to weigh their potential usefulness against moves whose results you can be certain of.
Number values stay fairly low over the course of the game; you're never going to hit 999 damage with an attack, let alone 9999. But the game still manages to implement a huge scope of mechanical character growth from beginning to end. Like the Disgaea series, the Kamidori contains extensive super-endgame material, where beating it once opens up a lot of new content which is more challenging than anything faced in the initial playthrough. The game contains three distinct main plotlines (in addition to a huge number of sidequests,) so accessing the New Game+ material (which constitutes a really surprising proportion of the game,) doesn't entail playing through the same main plot repeatedly.
I also found the game's take on weapon attack power interesting. While, like most games, the character's attack power is their strength plus their weapon's attack power, that attack power is measured against the baseline of their most basic weapon. The attack power for bottom tier weapons is zero, and early in the game, weapons differentiated by a single point of attack power will result in meaningfully different performance in battle.
Kamidori Alchemy Meister is a visual novel/strategy RPG hybrid, much heavier on gameplay than most hybrid visual novels. The game contains explicit sexual content (I actually personally believe that explicit sexual content can have a legitimate place in works of artistic merit, but the sexual content in Kamidori Alchemy Meister tends heavily towards the gratuitous.) On the gameplay side though, it's exceptionally well devised, and uses an unusually simple system which actually turns out to be remarkably well balanced and suited to the sorts of challenges the game presents.
Physical attacks are determined by the formula of ATK-DEF, where the defender's defense power is simply subtracted directly from the attacker's attack power. An attacker with 50 attack power hitting an enemy with 25 defense will do 25 damage, an attacker with 100 attack power hitting an enemy with 25 defense will do 75 damage. There is no randomization, and the results are totally predictable in advance of each move. Most other combat formulas are similarly simple. There are various multipliers or dividers involved when dealing with elemental weaknesses or affinities and such, but again, these are all simple and deterministic, and their results can be predicted in advance.
On the other hand, once you progress beyond the early stages where you're still picking up the game principles, there tend to be enough moving parts on a battlefield that it's difficult to extend precise predictions more than a few moves in ahead. Maps are often extensive, and unexplored portions are hidden from view, including enemies within that space, so new threats are often produced unpredictably over the course of a battle. Even though you can usually determine the precise immediate consequences of a move, gameplay still tends to revolve around calculated risk. Moves whose immediate consequences aren't entirely predictable don't come into play until much later in the game, and add another element to the risk management, where you have to weigh their potential usefulness against moves whose results you can be certain of.
Number values stay fairly low over the course of the game; you're never going to hit 999 damage with an attack, let alone 9999. But the game still manages to implement a huge scope of mechanical character growth from beginning to end. Like the Disgaea series, the Kamidori contains extensive super-endgame material, where beating it once opens up a lot of new content which is more challenging than anything faced in the initial playthrough. The game contains three distinct main plotlines (in addition to a huge number of sidequests,) so accessing the New Game+ material (which constitutes a really surprising proportion of the game,) doesn't entail playing through the same main plot repeatedly.
I also found the game's take on weapon attack power interesting. While, like most games, the character's attack power is their strength plus their weapon's attack power, that attack power is measured against the baseline of their most basic weapon. The attack power for bottom tier weapons is zero, and early in the game, weapons differentiated by a single point of attack power will result in meaningfully different performance in battle.
Making Stats Matter More (than just hitting shit real hard).
author=RedAkerston
At first the battle appears easy, but as it draws out for 5 minutes ... 10 minutes, that initial impression quickly fades. Instead of being a black and white affair of big attacks and big heals, the numbers ebb and flow organically, slowly, but with legitimate meaning and need for a tactical approach.
While I'm in favor of making battles more strategic, I think this may be going overboard. In particular, just because combat is strategic, doesn't mean it needs to be slow, and while 10+ minute battles have their place, I think that place is pretty limited.
If the player can't scan the enemy to view stats like their total health, then you can preserve their tension throughout the fight by having them not know how long they have to hold out, but particularly in a battle that long which appears easy at first, this is liable to lead to a lot of confused, suboptimal strategy, and if the combat is challenging, probably a high loss rate. Losing frequently in a battle which takes that long, when losses inevitably come after a high time investment into the battle, is usually going to be highly frustrating.
If the player can scan the enemy, then they can ration their resources appropriately, but if the flow of battle is highly stable, the player can come up with a working pattern and implement it and will effectively know that they've won well before the battle is over.
If the flow of battle is unstable, then the level of tension remains high, and the player knows they can't rely on a particular pattern carrying them to victory. This is the sort of situation that game designers often want to evoke with major boss enemies. But there's a reason they tend to reserve it for battles of high significance; keeping the level of tension high for the duration of long battles is wearing on the player, so this sort of thing shouldn't be overused. Also, in a battle which appears easy at first, and the difficulty only starts to become clear as it drags out, while the tension will tend to be high ("If I make the wrong choices, I'll lose,") the excitement is liable to be low ("If I make the wrong moves, I'll lose in sixty turns.")
This kind of combat might be have an interesting effect on the mental state of the player, and it might suit certain battles where you want to evoke that kind of effect on them, but I'm definitely wary of the idea of making it the mainstay of combat for an entire game.
Has anyone ever played "Brave Story New Travler" for PSP?
I haven't played the game, but I've read the book it was based on.
The book is honestly kind of weird because it feels like it was written to be a video game, rather than a book.
The book is honestly kind of weird because it feels like it was written to be a video game, rather than a book.
The Elder Scribes of RMN: Reviewrim
Would a review of Avantasia count for the purposes of this event? It's technically been reviewed before, but the review carried no rating (meaning that it still appears on the list of unreviewed games,) and the review was for an earlier version of the game, which has since been revised.
Translator Wanted!
Although I've spent some time in Germany, my skills with the language can charitably be described as "shitty." If you're looking for someone to help with proofreading and making the content sound natural to native English speakers though, I'm willing to help.
The Elder Scribes of RMN: Reviewrim
Planning to review Adventure Academy and Land of Dreams, will add others if I have time.
Games - Tester
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