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Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
CloseHow do you find these awesome articles, man?! Thanks for sharing!
I forgot how dull and uninspired BD's level design was, but a part of me thinks that it was completely intentional, for better or worse. In a game as grind heavy as that, the devs decided to design stages that practically forced you to make wrong turns and waste your time just to fight more enemies to get more EXP and JP. Add the fact that encounters are pretty boring and uninspired on their own, the game felt more and more like a slog. I agree with the article that dungeons containing more than just artificial lengthening gimmicks probably would have made the game so much better. Something to think about when making our own games.
... Man, I remember liking BD. Not gush worthy, but it was fine. The more I look back on it, the less I find myself liking it. Bleh.
I forgot how dull and uninspired BD's level design was, but a part of me thinks that it was completely intentional, for better or worse. In a game as grind heavy as that, the devs decided to design stages that practically forced you to make wrong turns and waste your time just to fight more enemies to get more EXP and JP. Add the fact that encounters are pretty boring and uninspired on their own, the game felt more and more like a slog. I agree with the article that dungeons containing more than just artificial lengthening gimmicks probably would have made the game so much better. Something to think about when making our own games.
... Man, I remember liking BD. Not gush worthy, but it was fine. The more I look back on it, the less I find myself liking it. Bleh.
I still like BD a lot, but the criticisms are valid. Thanks for sharing the article, slash... level design is definitely my weakest point.
This article was fabulous. Thanks for sharing! This gives me some ideas on how to make a random encounter system feel less intrusive, as well.
Ahhh, I'm glad you all liked it! The article's by Aevee Bee - she's written a lot of other good stuff about RPGs & games (my favorite one is Aevee Reviews the Destiny Flavor Text, also highly recommended).
Anywho, I definitely agree - I think the biggest flaw is that there wasn't really anything exciting happening when running around in BD's dungeons. Because of how the combat worked, you could almost certainly take out the average monster party in the first turn (especially if you set up your party for it, which I did ASAP). So now you have all these random encounters which boil down to:
And when there's no excitement in the battle, those transitions start to reaaaallllyyyy grind on you! It got to the point where I stopped caring about finding treasure chests and just ran through dungeons as fast as possible, until I saw that you could disable random encounters, at which point I got unnecessarily angry and turned off the 3DS. (I kinda went on a rant about RPG design after I read this article :P )
It's a shame too, because some of the art is so good... I saw the cover of BD 2 and was seduced for a half-second, before my sanity returned.
Anywho, I definitely agree - I think the biggest flaw is that there wasn't really anything exciting happening when running around in BD's dungeons. Because of how the combat worked, you could almost certainly take out the average monster party in the first turn (especially if you set up your party for it, which I did ASAP). So now you have all these random encounters which boil down to:
- Battle Transition In
- Brave 16 times, kill everything effortlessly
- Get EXP & Gold & Loot
- Battle Transition Out
And when there's no excitement in the battle, those transitions start to reaaaallllyyyy grind on you! It got to the point where I stopped caring about finding treasure chests and just ran through dungeons as fast as possible, until I saw that you could disable random encounters, at which point I got unnecessarily angry and turned off the 3DS. (I kinda went on a rant about RPG design after I read this article :P )
It's a shame too, because some of the art is so good... I saw the cover of BD 2 and was seduced for a half-second, before my sanity returned.
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