SAYA'S PROFILE

What makes games "fun"? It's a bit of a hard question. In my personal experience, I like multiple things in games: exploration, treasure, puzzles, difficulty, a good story, an interesting world. I suppose, despite the fact that RPG cliches have been done to bits and pieces, there's still good fun in them.

For example, one of my favorites was Golden Sun. It was really a classic, but one of the things that made it special was the puzzle element. Instead of the standard switch/maze/other overdone RPG puzzle, it had its own system: Psyenergy. Psyenergy let you manipulate the terrain by tapping into the four elements: water, earth, wind, fire. It's a bit difficult to explain, but there were many abilities to use in different situations. True, after a while it became "oh look there's a puddle, let's use Frost on it to make it a pillar", but it was a good concept at its core.

In an RPG such as FFX, there are different things of interest. Let's not go into the Cloister of Trials puzzles, those were more annoying than fun. There is a bit of a tricky area in between puzzles that are too easy and puzzles that are too hard that can be easy to cross. Anyhow, what made FFX fun for me was the loot and the Sphere Grid. It can be a really powerful tool to let the user level up and choose (or pretend to) which stats they get. For some reason, the Licence Board in FFXII didn't do the job for me-- there, it was really easy to wind up with really similar characters who all knew the same spells. Ultimately, I think it would be a good idea to do something inbetween-- a sphere grid where some classes intersect, but most of the time do not. Still, programming that would be a huge hassle.

FFX had a good loot system. Why? Because Rikku could use the items on the enemies as attacks and in her limit breaks. Personally, I think the game would be a lot more fun if the player was forced to rely on that more often. Also, the loot could be used to customize weaponry-- and if the game was more difficult, the player would be more likely to consider making their own weapons for specific scenarios. For example, instead of switching to Lulu to take out the elemental fiends, you could reequip Tidus with an elemental sword for the same effect.

Personally, I advocate having the player find ways around the obvious solution rather than relying on tried and true strategies. I've always found the FFX self-imposed challenges inspiring, because the game seems too easy otherwise.

Then, to come again to my current dilemma... I'm making a side-scroller, Odin Sphere style. The problem is that Odin Sphere's charm relies on action battles, and no way am I skilled enough to program that. Side-view battles FFX style are the way I'm going. Which brings me to another problem: treasure chests. They just aren't nearly as fun to find when the game is a side-scroller. Same thing with puzzles-- they're just much more difficult to do. I think that I'm risking throwing all of the "fun" in the game onto the combat, and I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket.

Any advice? I might just end up submitting and doing the classic style RPG rather than a no-jumping side scroller. Alter AILA Genesis might have pulled it off, but truthfully, that game wasn't one of my favorites.

Confession: I've always wanted to make my own sequel to Golden Sun. And then Dark Dawn came out, so I suppose it's a little bit pointless now. OTL

Okay, so I posted a screenshot in the screenshot topic, and since my pixel art wasn't particularly that good, I decided to start this topic. So basically, what I'm asking for is for some constructive criticism. Please be as specific as possible, because when people say "remove that weird filter", I have no idea what they mean because I'm not using a filter.

So I've gone from this:


to this:


I did the grass and ground tiles myself this time around, no reference. Is it better? Needs more color depth? Currently working to fix those pesky cliffs and looping problems.

Just wondering, what, in RMN's opinion (RMN means you) are the best games for PS2? I don't feel like getting a new console, so I might as well explore my options.

So I was thinking of actually buying VX or XP to not feel so guilty about downloading abandonware. I really love the traditional 2k and 2k3 styled graphics though, and I was wondering how difficult it would be to implement those on VX or XP. Which would be easier to work with in this regard?

How about implementing a side-view battle system?
Time-hit style combat system?

Thanks!

Is there a good, tested place where I can download it?

Please and thank you.