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Ragequit posted:Oh cool a jrpg/wrpg debate. You're welcome. Also if you end up liking the game, XSEED has also confirmed they're going to be bringing out the next Trails in the Sky game as well. It just doesn't have a release date yet. I can't remember exactly but I think they said that the second game either had 2 times or 4 times the amount of text the first game did so the translation is taking a lot longer. Also. a small tip. After ANYTHING story related, check for jobs. As some of the jobs are time based and you could lose the opportunity to do one if you wait too long.
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May 8, 2011 10:25
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What did I start? Kiss and make up immediately!
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May 8, 2011 11:32
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A single problem I have, call it a pet-peeve, is that games with rpg elements (in the vein that mass effect is a third person shooter with rpg elements for example) that become popular, suddenly equate in the industry's eyes to a necessity to make all other RPGs like that game with rpg elements.
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May 8, 2011 17:14
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The Black Stones posted:You're welcome. Also if you end up liking the game, XSEED has also confirmed they're going to be bringing out the next Trails in the Sky game as well. It just doesn't have a release date yet. I can't remember exactly but I think they said that the second game either had 2 times or 4 times the amount of text the first game did so the translation is taking a lot longer. 2-4 times more?  But the first game was already a huge task to translate. I think it's gonna be quite a wait.
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May 8, 2011 17:41
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TheOriginalEd posted:A single problem I have, call it a pet-peeve, is that games with rpg elements (in the vein that mass effect is a third person shooter with rpg elements for example) that become popular, suddenly equate in the industry's eyes to a necessity to make all other RPGs like that game with rpg elements. Yea it's really annoying that things like loot and class/skill selection that actually matters is now seen as 'bad' by a whole lot of games journalists. I like having to actually think about my skill and item choices. Also a lot of people in this thread haven't played the Witcher, and that's sad.
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May 8, 2011 19:25
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HondaCivet posted:2-4 times more? I looked around and yeah. The sequel has 3 million japanese character script in it while the first had 1.5. It's gonna be a wait.
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May 8, 2011 19:54
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How do you guys feel about strategy guides for RPGs? Not strategy guides in general (if you just say they're worthless, and you can get them for free on gamefaqs, please, stay out of the discussion, that isn't what we're looking for) but strategy guides for RPGs. Disgaea and the Persona series has a fantastic line of strategy guides from Doublejump, and I think Xenosaga is at least pretty bearable with one. Personally, I try to look for detailed maps in my guides, those are the most useful to me. RPGs is the only genre of games I'd even consider a guide for, and that's because I want to be able to thumb through the maps or sidequests easily. Bonus points if it's a combination artbook though.
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May 8, 2011 22:17
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Question: Is MLB 2011: The Show at least partially an RPG? You can create a character, adjust his stat points and "class", and then level him up through "real combat" and "training" modes. You can go many different routes with your character, there's not really a "story" in the pure sense but you can demand trades or complain to the media. If Road to the Show isn't an RPG because the actual game play in no way resembles what we think of an RPG as resembling, then why is a 3rd person shooter with dialogue options an RPG? More on the topic of actual RPGs, I know that people on this forum have said good things about Resonance of Fate. I'm thinking about buying it because it's been cut to 20 dollars on Amazon and I was already looking at ordering Alpha Protocol. Are these two games together worth the the order, or will I just be upset five hours into Resonance of Fate and put it down forever?
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May 8, 2011 23:09
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Daunte Vicknabb posted:Question: RoF has some good ideas, but doesn't really do much with them. Combat gets pretty repetitive maybe a quarter of the way through, despite being basically the only thing the game has to offer.
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May 8, 2011 23:11
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dis astranagant posted:RoF has some good ideas, but doesn't really do much with them. Combat gets pretty repetitive maybe a quarter of the way through, despite being basically the only thing the game has to offer. NOT TRUE. It also has the ability to play dressup with your characters!
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May 9, 2011 00:56
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Ineffiable posted:How do you guys feel about strategy guides for RPGs? They're the only time I'll actually buy guides. I saw a guide for loving Guitar Hero of all things once. Why the gently caress would you need a guide for that?
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May 9, 2011 01:59
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Ineffiable posted:How do you guys feel about strategy guides for RPGs? I actually prefer them to online guides in the case of RPGs because the books often have really useful charts in an easy to read way. The biggest recent example of this for me is the Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep guide. In that game you can make new skills and magic and stuff by fusing together two of your old ones and the guide has charts that detail what you can get with every compatible combination in the game. Very useful. Final Fantasy X's guide covered the stats of all the Blitzball players in the game and without that thing I really don't think I would have had the patience to play that minigame. Also having maps that aren't ASCII art and are readable is nice.
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May 9, 2011 02:15
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RoF combat actually takes a different direction towards the later half as you need to start actually making use of the break mechanics and such (the handgun special ability, etc). But yeah, you can wear yourself out very quickly in RoF if you do a lot of grinding for tiles and such (which is really unnecessary but a lot of fun to do hilarious things with hex stations and the arena). Overall pretty good game but definitely not for everyone. Virtually no cohesive plot to speak of either, you're pretty much playing it for the gameplay/pretty fight choreography and the ability to play dress-up with your three party mates.
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May 9, 2011 02:16
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I had a strategy guide for FFVIII back in the day and I really loved it, didn't especially use it much for the walkthrough but there was all kinds of cool info on secret draw points, the card game, refining poo poo and the sidequests and stuff. It's all stuff you can get online but it was really nice to have the actual guide
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May 9, 2011 03:30
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I was actually going to mention that one. The official ff8 guide was great. It didnt cover the story at all. It was like a no spoiler walkthrough that covered the necessary points without giving too much away and listed the neat poo poo you might miss. I bought the ff9 strategy guide because the 8 one was so good and really regretted that. What an awful guide.
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May 9, 2011 03:45
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TheOriginalEd posted:I was actually going to mention that one. The official ff8 guide was great. It didnt cover the story at all. It was like a no spoiler walkthrough that covered the necessary points without giving too much away and listed the neat poo poo you might miss. Yep, I remembering buying the guide around the time the Xbox was coming out. Finding out that half the drat guide was on some website that didn't exist anymore was the most infuriating feeling.
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May 9, 2011 03:54
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I actually liked the Parasite Eve guide even though I only bought it when I first rented the game. It touched on a lot of stuff you wouldn't really know about like rare drops from chests. Probably the best part of it was the enemies index had official artwork for all the monsters in the game, most of which had disturbing yet cool designs. My friend used to have the FFVIII guide as well and I agree, that was drat useful.
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May 9, 2011 03:55
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FanaticalMilk posted:Yep, I remembering buying the guide around the time the Xbox was coming out. Finding out that half the drat guide was on some website that didn't exist anymore was the most infuriating feeling. aha seriously? that's laughably bad
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May 9, 2011 04:23
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I'm sure this has been asked a few times, but I'd love to play more loot-driven RPG games like Diablo, Titan's Quest, and Torchlight. I've only played the above three so anything else would be great to check out. Hell, are there any other games that are like Borderlands? I would actually prefer something more action-y and not so click-based. It would be awesome if I could buy your recommendations on Steam 
Strong Female fucked around with this message at 04:28 on May 9, 2011 |
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May 9, 2011 04:24
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A friend of mine sold me his copy of Xenogears and included the strategy guide with it. It was pretty well produced, and a necessity for actually beating it without having to spend way too much time trying to figure out some of the codes needed for doors and such in the last section of the game. (Though I swear I remember there being one that even the strategy guide said to just brute force. Heh.) I've noticed RPG strategy guides often have a lot of cool extra info on the characters and such that you wouldn't likely learn otherwise, which is neat. As for their usage, using them while playing at all times seems like a waste, but using them to min/max or using when you get so stuck you're not likely to figure out how to proceed on your own just seems like common sense to me. The Fifteenth Pen fucked around with this message at 04:40 on May 9, 2011 |
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May 9, 2011 04:34
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The Fifteenth Pen posted:A friend of mine sold me his copy of Xenogears and included the strategy guide with it. It was pretty well produced, and a necessity for actually beating it without having to spend way too much time trying to figure out some of the codes needed for doors and such in the last section of the game. (Though I swear I remember there being one that even the strategy guide said to just brute force. Heh.)
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May 9, 2011 04:36
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Glad to know I'm not alone in the strategy guide thinking. Now what they should do is have Bradygames or something like that start charging a yearly access fee to .pdfs of all their strategy guides. Imagine looking up strategy guides from 15 years ago instantly on your phone. This kind of service wouldn't be much bandwidth and I'm sure they've got most, if not, all of their guides uploaded in a format similar to .pdf. But on the other hand, part of the appeal is having something to physically thumb through and look up stats and charts.
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May 9, 2011 05:00
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Paperhouse posted:If only they'd released Perfect Works in English
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May 9, 2011 05:02
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Daunte Vicknabb posted:Is MLB 2011: The Show at least partially an RPG? You can create a character, adjust his stat points and "class", and then level him up through "real combat" and "training" modes. You can go many different routes with your character, there's not really a "story" in the pure sense but you can demand trades or complain to the media. If Road to the Show isn't an RPG because the actual game play in no way resembles what we think of an RPG as resembling, then why is a 3rd person shooter with dialogue options an RPG? Lack of any kind of narrative arc, character interaction, or exploration component?
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May 9, 2011 05:05
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Ineffiable posted:Now what they should do is have Bradygames or something like that start charging a yearly access fee to .pdfs of all their strategy guides. This is actually a really cool idea. The only company I know that regularly puts out PDF versions of their guides is DoubleJump. I saw the PDF version of their Phantom Brave guide, it was nice.
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May 9, 2011 05:20
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 I promise I am not trying to be a jerk here--I am probably completely misunderstanding your argument exquisite tea posted:It's weird seeing the revisionist perspective on RPGs from these forums. By that, I mean this prevailing viewpoint that "RPGs by their very nature should offer the most customization possible in an open world where every action has an impact." 1. "RPGs were linear at first" 2. "People think the ideal type of an RPG is one with dialogue-heavy free-form gameplay" 3. "RPGs, starting in the 1990s, had their whole stories out in the open." I cannot figure out which is your primary criticism. In any case, I feel I can find earlier examples than Daggerfall and Planescape: Torment for your complaints: If your point is that RPGs were "go here, go here, go here" first, well, even Akalabeth had an open world you were free to explore at your leisure in the process of doing the random quest Lord British gave you ("go and slay a skeleton!"). There were no avenues closed off at the beginning which became open later. And I am sure someone will point out that is not even the earliest such game. If your point was that the dialogue-heavy free-form game only came into being in the 1990s, then Ultima IV had both a completely open world and a text parser in 1985. Surely that counts, and it might not even be the first? If your point is that games only had their whole stories out in the open by the 1990s, I do not really know what to say to that, as I cannot quite tell what that means. Surely even games as ridiculously old as Wizard's Crown or The Eternal Dagger had, in their very game names, their whole plots out in the open? Even if you do not think something like Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord counts in this regard?
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May 9, 2011 06:54
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Ineffiable posted:But on the other hand, part of the appeal is having something to physically thumb through and look up stats and charts.
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May 9, 2011 07:31
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Here is a sure-fire way to tell if you're playing an RPG: Do you have any form of inventory? Can it contain more than just weapons? Are there any inventory items that have plot relevance? If you answered yes to all three, then congrats on playing an RPG.
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May 9, 2011 07:33
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Daunte Vicknabb posted:Question: But a Baseball game CAN be an RPG. The key thing here is that there's supposed to be a narrative of some kind. If the game had some kind of story it would be a Baseball RPG. Also what kind of gameplay resembles what you think of as "RPG" gameplay?
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May 9, 2011 07:37
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Nickoten posted:But a Baseball game CAN be an RPG. The key thing here is that there's supposed to be a narrative of some kind. If the game had some kind of story it would be a Baseball RPG. There has to be a narrative for it to be an RPG? What level does the narrative have to be on, because I've played some extremely basic dungeon crawlers that I'd consider RPGs. For example, Desktop Dungeons is almost certainly an RPG (that resembles a roguelike) and it has literally no story. I think "RPG" gameplay is mostly passive, IE, your statistics and the choices you make do most of the work and controller execution/twitch are either nonexistent or beneficial but usually not a matter of life and death. Although that precludes MMOs, so it's definitely not perfect. I guess the point is that RPG really comes down to being what the game developer intends for the game to be classified as. MLB Power Pros is definitely more RPG-like than MLB The Show. I don't really know if there's any one thing that defines an RPG, but it certainly isn't story. I guess I think that RPGs should just be treated with the pornography exception.
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May 9, 2011 08:35
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Daunte Vicknabb posted:There has to be a narrative for it to be an RPG? What level does the narrative have to be on, because I've played some extremely basic dungeon crawlers that I'd consider RPGs. For example, Desktop Dungeons is almost certainly an RPG (that resembles a roguelike) and it has literally no story. I think "RPG" gameplay is mostly passive, IE, your statistics and the choices you make do most of the work and controller execution/twitch are either nonexistent or beneficial but usually not a matter of life and death. Although that precludes MMOs, so it's definitely not perfect. I'm the other way: I'm less hung up on mechanics than probably anything else. I consider the three defining characteristics of the genre to be narrative, exploration, and some kind of resource management (concretely, like "I have X healing potions" and abstractly as in "The level cap in New Vegas is 30, that means I can only raise so many skills and get so many perks.") Consequently I call Roguelikes Roguelikes, not anything else.
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May 9, 2011 08:50
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Plank Walker posted:Here is a sure-fire way to tell if you're playing an RPG: Monkey Island and Resident Evil.
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May 9, 2011 08:50
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Time to divine from the ether the One True Objective Meaning of a word. I suggest we employ the Socratic method, only instead of asking learned and wise questions of each other, we instead just throw farts into our faces until someone realizes not a single person has a reason to give a gently caress
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May 9, 2011 08:59
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Nickoten posted:But a Baseball game CAN be an RPG. It sure can, it's called Success Mode in MLB Power Pros.
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May 9, 2011 11:04
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Doc Hawkins posted:Monkey Island and Resident Evil. Thank you for coming up with examples, I saw that post at like 3am and was too frazzled to think of anything. Always peeves me off when people say stuff like "It's not an RPG if it doesn't have an inventory" 
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May 9, 2011 17:03
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Well, that's different. I can't think of a (videogame) RPG that doesn't have an "inventory," but there's a million games that have one which aren't RPGs, so obviously having an inventory doesn't equate to being an RPG.Coolio posted:Time to divine from the ether the One True Objective Meaning of a word. I suggest we employ the Socratic method, only instead of asking learned and wise questions of each other, we instead just throw farts into our faces until someone realizes not a single person has a reason to give a gently caress Hey, don't over-simplify, I'm trying to fart against prescriptive definitions in general. 
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May 9, 2011 19:57
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Daunte Vicknabb posted:There has to be a narrative for it to be an RPG? What level does the narrative have to be on, because I've played some extremely basic dungeon crawlers that I'd consider RPGs. For example, Desktop Dungeons is almost certainly an RPG (that resembles a roguelike) and it has literally no story. I think "RPG" gameplay is mostly passive, IE, your statistics and the choices you make do most of the work and controller execution/twitch are either nonexistent or beneficial but usually not a matter of life and death. Although that precludes MMOs, so it's definitely not perfect. I'd say that your character has to work towards some kind of goal that requires the use of his abilities, yeah. Hence why Game Dev Studio is not considered an RPG, but the My League mode in Baseball Superstars on iOS could probably be classified as one. I think the idea of some kind of goal or eventual end is what separates something like Shiren the Wanderer, which is very bones narratively, from a survival simulator, which will probably have stats and such, too. In other words, you don't need to have a strong narrative, but it's a common trait among RPGs. I haven't played Power Pros or The Show, so I can't comment on those, but if you had a game that had lots of stats and interactivity as far as a single player's career went, I think the presence of some kind of narrative is what make the difference between an RPG and a Simulation. It doesn't have to be strong. Think of it as life compared to a story. Life is a collection of events that may or may not be causally related. They happen, you experience them. A story is not just a recreation of life, it's a recreation of life with some kind of implied meaning. Looking at a description of Power Pros on Wikipedia, it seems to give a context to the games you play within the player's life. That's what makes it an RPG rather than just a simulation. But yeah I'd definitely agree that an RPG is a set of traits that a game should have multiple from. I think that Fallout 3, for example, definitely counts as an RPG because while skill can potentially trump stats, it also has a lot of choices to make, ways to improve yourself, and a large amount of attention paid to molding a character through the actions and dialogue selected for them. I personally think that creating a character and making decisions for them (As an important aspect of the game) is a trait of RPGs that has greater weight than the others. What I mean by this is that even though Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol rely a lot on skill to get through lots of the games' challenges, the fact that who your character is/becomes is so important to the design of the game instantly makes them RPGs. In comparison, Final Fantasy VI may not feature that core component of a table-top RPG, but it does incorporate a lot of others elements like having a strong narrative, being reliant on stats and chance to determine success, having some kind of power progression, etc. For perhaps a better example of this way of thinking, I consider Way of the Samurai a Samurai RPG. It's all about creating a character through his actions and dialog over the course of three day within the context of a bunch of related events within one area of Japan. Its only real connection to RPGs in terms of the way it resolves conflict is that you get loot when you fight in the form of weapons, and can upgrade the stats of your weapons. There's also some rudimentary character progression in that you can block certain moves and then have your character automatically block them afterward, accumulating a list of attacks your character instinctively knows how to defend. It was marketed as an action game and it pretty much is in most ways, but I consider it an RPG because it has the key element that table-top role-playing games have in common, even though it doesn't contain many other staples of the genre. It's just my opinion, of course! Edit: I think my definition of an RPG may end up extending to those Japanese dating sims. Thinking about it now, I'd say I consider those to be a kind of RPG, too! Nickoten fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 9, 2011 |
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May 9, 2011 20:36
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Plank Walker posted:Here is a sure-fire way to tell if you're playing an RPG:
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May 9, 2011 22:59
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Can anyone give me some info about Kartia and Beyond the Beyond? I found them while browsing a local game store and was somewhat amazed by their price. Are they actually any good, or are they just relatively rare?
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May 10, 2011 00:12
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JTDistortion posted:Can anyone give me some info about Kartia and Beyond the Beyond? I found them while browsing a local game store and was somewhat amazed by their price. Are they actually any good, or are they just relatively rare? Beyond the Beyond is generic poo poo, and let down a generation of PS1 RPG players who were desperate for the system to get its first RPG. It's from the same company that went on to make Golden Sun, and is pretty much exactly like that game. How one is considered "good" while the other isn't is beyond me.
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May 10, 2011 00:22
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