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All this talk of anime has almost put me in the mood to play through Live-A-Live again
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Dec 31, 2015 02:43
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Erg posted:Ys: Origin tells you in its title to play it first Makes complete sense to me but some nerds have said otherwise. Don't matter right now anyway as I'm all about Trails in the Sky and Shining Force at the moment. Starting another rpg would just be crazy. What's the most you guys have had on the go at one time without the experience suffering? I just sunk about 60 hours into Fallout 4 with Starcraft 2 as my different genre distraction. Don't think I'd have been able to play another lengthy, engrossing title at the same time.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:46
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Endorph posted:idk, I just don't like how most WRPGs play in general. The dialogue option trees ring way too hollow to me and make any characterization gotten from dialogue feel super forced, because it feels like im just going down a checklist of things to talk to a dude about. More than that, the 'zoom in on both people's faces' thing means that there's basically no room for camera work, it's just two sideviews of talking heads. Even if the writing is strong - Mask of the Betrayer is one of my favorite games - it feels incredibly forced. Even in JRPGs with really bad writing, it at least feels like the badly written characters are just expressing themselves, instead of being prodded into expressing themselves by walking up to them and pressing A. I think that's fair reasoning for why you prefer JRPG style. They do tend to do silly comedy better where-as WRPG's have to depend on absurdism, irony, and dark humor. The player avatar means you have to role-play yourself to see interesting dialog options and get into it. It's either that or think of it as a "choose your own skit" which I tend to do. On the other hand, WRPG's can be carried by great VA. Martin Sheen alone nearly makes ME2 (with some help from some other great VA's) in a way similar to how Rene Auberjonois makes House and every quest he's in so much greater. JRPG voice over always feels so forced in comparison. It has what I can best describe as "that anime sound" to it because of either fitting to lips moving or the necessary enthusiastic and squeeky lady or the classic whacky/dark schizo guy.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:51
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', but it's still way more use of the medium than I've seen any WPRG do, probably because WRPGs are so married to the idea of create-a-character.
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alcharagia posted:All this talk of anime has almost put me in the mood to play through Live-A-Live again The best way to talk anyone out of Live-A-Live is to remind them that the Distant Future chapter exists
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Dec 31, 2015 02:57
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The White Dragon posted:The best way to talk anyone out of Live-A-Live is to remind them that the Distant Future chapter exists But I like that chapter...
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Dec 31, 2015 03:23
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anime is bad and is the worst thing to happen to rpgs
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Dec 31, 2015 03:25
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DOUBLE CLICK HERE posted:anime is bad and is the worst thing to happen to rpgs Ironic self-hate is the worst thing that happens to teenagers
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Dec 31, 2015 03:26
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bloodychill posted:I think that's fair reasoning for why you prefer JRPG style. They do tend to do silly comedy better where-as WRPG's have to depend on absurdism, irony, and dark humor. The player avatar means you have to role-play yourself to see interesting dialog options and get into it. It's either that or think of it as a "choose your own skit" which I tend to do. While I think there are JRPGs with good dubs/voice-acting, I can't deny ME2 has pretty much a perfect cast. Sheen as TIM was great of course but even the less famous VAs all turned in perfect performances. Except whoever does Man Shepard. I just can't stand him, I'm sorry. Of course, more open-world WPRGs like Bethesda's run into the trouble of having a bajillion-and-one characters so you will hear the same guy over and over and over and over. I think that can be just as immersion-breaking and annoying as anything in a JRPG. You mentioned New Vegas, I think that game's voicecast consisted of 50% Yuri Lowenthal and 45% Liam O'Brien. Although the unique voices like your companions', Caesar, House, etc. are pretty great.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:45
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americans have never made a good rpg
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Dec 31, 2015 03:46
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Male shep owns.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:47
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Davincie posted:americans have never made a good rpg 
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Dec 31, 2015 03:49
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NikkolasKing posted:While I think there are JRPGs with good dubs/voice-acting, I can't deny ME2 has pretty much a perfect cast. Sheen as TIM was great of course but even the less famous VAs all turned in perfect performances. Yuri Lowenthal and Liam O'Brien both own so I don't see the problem here.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:52
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Davincie posted:americans have never made a good rpg South Park
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Dec 31, 2015 04:00
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littleorv posted:Yuri Lowenthal and Liam O'Brien both own so I don't see the problem here. I like them both as well. It just doesn't help the characters when a high-ranking Legion officer sounds just like the one Powder Ganger who won the Nipton Lottery and that one store clerk and then that other guy and the other other guy..... Which is why they gave the most significant characters unique voices.
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Dec 31, 2015 04:14
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NikkolasKing posted:I like them both as well. It just doesn't help the characters when a high-ranking Legion officer sounds just like the one Powder Ganger who won the Nipton Lottery and that one store clerk and then that other guy and the other other guy..... I blame the radiation
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Dec 31, 2015 04:15
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Endorph posted:I'll freely admit that I can't name any JRPGs that are mostly subtle, but at least the way JRPGs operate allow for scenes of subtlety. Quiet moments where two characters just look at each other and don't say a word, or even letting the camera do some characterization if they're really creative. I've mostly seen camera work used for comedy in JRPGs, but it's still more than the average WRPG can do just as a matter of course - 'comedic' timing in WRPGs is usually just zooming in on a guy's face as he awkwardly shifts to an exaggerated smirk. Even in games without much camera work, either due to age or using a visual novel presentation with talking sprites, it still feels more natural than the WRPG way of doing things. Every time I start up Skies of Arcadia, I'm impressed by the cinematography and framing of the opening segment, and it stays pretty quality throughout the rest of the game this isn't super relevant i just wanted to bring up the actual best rpg
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Dec 31, 2015 04:28
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Looper posted:Every time I start up Skies of Arcadia, I'm impressed by the cinematography and framing of the opening segment, and it stays pretty quality throughout the rest of the game
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Dec 31, 2015 05:02
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I enjoy WRPGs but I really don't think they're actually very good at storytelling. They're good at small-scale stories. The individual story of a companion or a small town is generally a lot more interesting because they are effectively self-contained stories that never overlap with anything except in the rarest of ways. It means a lot of great individual moments but really piss-rear end weak stories which tend to be thematic messes. Even Obsidian's strong point are the small stories. Alpha Protocol is a lot more engaging for seeing how your interaction with a single character plays out than in the overarching betrayed-by-the-organization plot. There's no real way to have any depth to the storytelling because you have to make a single overarching story that plays as well to "I eat babies" as "I hug orphans." They have strong characters or memorable missions or whatever but there's maybe two games I think actually have good cohesive storytelling where it feels like a sensibly structures story and not a bunch of random often-disconnected plots thrown into a sandbox together without rhyme or reason. Planescape Torment is a good game because (more or less) everything you do in the game helps underline and emphasize decisions and choices and themes in the game. It's not high art, it's basically on par with a pretty good fantasy novel, but the mere fact it manages to have a cohesive structure while still compensating for player choice is a wonder. Even in something like The Witcher 3 which is better than most Geralt's core quest just suffers compared to all the side stuff you can do. His desperate longing to find his missing daughter works fine on paper but gets bloated and lost among spending 100 hours becoming the CCG champion of the world and wandering back and forth across the countryside killing monsters for peasants. And one makes it more fun to play so I ain't criticizing overly-hard but still.
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Dec 31, 2015 05:54
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yeah, mask of the betrayer works as well as it does because it's fairly short and there aren't that many sidequests, and most of the ones that exist feed into either 'only love could be so cruel' or your weird soul-eating powers. Compare to the base NWN2, where the game is sooort of about what happens when heroes gently caress up, but is mostly just about killing orcs for fifty hours.
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Dec 31, 2015 05:57
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I just want to say that I stand with the people saying Ys Origin is the one to start with. Oath in Felghana is the second best and has more open, RPG-ish world design but Origin is the most polished one in that style and the best for just jumping in and getting to feel what makes it fun, and it has just plain better boss design that relies less on "wait for the boss to finish this pattern so you can start attacking him again" Only ever play Ys 1&2 if you're really interested in the story of the series afterwards, Ys Origin has a lot of neat little hooks with them you'll notice when you play them and they've actually got neat writing as far as PC-88 RPGs go but gameplay-wise they're not as fun as modern Ys The Colonel fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 05:58
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ImpAtom posted:I enjoy WRPGs but I really don't think they're actually very good at storytelling. They're good at small-scale stories. The individual story of a companion or a small town is generally a lot more interesting because they are effectively self-contained stories that never overlap with anything except in the rarest of ways. It means a lot of great individual moments but really piss-rear end weak stories which tend to be thematic messes. Even Obsidian's strong point are the small stories. Alpha Protocol is a lot more engaging for seeing how your interaction with a single character plays out than in the overarching betrayed-by-the-organization plot. There's no real way to have any depth to the storytelling because you have to make a single overarching story that plays as well to "I eat babies" as "I hug orphans." I see what you're saying. I had this same problem with Fallout 4. I started the game and was blazing along the MQ and people online were taken aback and criticizing me. My response was "I loving had my son kidnapped! Why would I waste my time helping random jerks or whatever else when my son is out there and probably needs my help?" Not that FO4 has a very good story from what I've seen but that's still the motivation you're given and I'm willing to roll with it. But then I met Cait and Hancock and and suddenly I am like "who the hell is Shaun?" Still, I think the people who make these games, be it BioWare or Obsidian or Bethesda or whoever else, know what people are playing for things like worlbuilding, characters, roleplaying, etc.. Dragon Age Origins is as basic as it gets when it comes to plot but it really hit home with a lot of people because of those things. It was almost hard for me to come back to JRPGs after I played my first WRPGs a year ago. I really missed that ability to RP and stuff. I hear the SMT games are really good about choices and decision making but they are odd ones out in JRPG Land so far as I know.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:09
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I really like some WRPGs, Fallout: New Vegas is def one of my favorite games ever, but I think generally unless it's a game that takes place in a really cool setting I wanna roleplay in, I prefer JRPGs for just having entertaining characters I have a fun time watching. I really should finish playing Skies of Arcadia, it was an awesome game from what I played and wasn't actually too difficult but I managed to get stuck on the ship combat thing on the sky desert
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Dec 31, 2015 06:17
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NikkolasKing posted:Still, I think the people who make these games, be it BioWare or Obsidian or Bethesda or whoever else, know what people are playing for things like worlbuilding, characters, roleplaying, etc.. I don't really think this is true. If anything I'd say WRPGs are moving closer to JRPGs, with a much heavier focus on party-members and pre-designated plots and less emphasis on roleplaying. The Witcher 3 owns but you're playing as Geralt in the Witcher 3 and your choices are limited to whatever he would do. The major conflicts involve his struggle to find his daughter and the weird romance-issues he has between two characters he has an extremely long history with. Fallout 4, Mass Effect and Dragon Age all basically seem to hold onto the idea of a player-customizable protagonist as much out of sheer inertia as anything. Player choice is important but all the major developers seem to be coming to the conclusion that player choice doesn't mean player freedom. In most cases it amounts to a 'but thou must' choice because you're not allowed to violate the plot and only rarely can you really ditch a character who the game considers plot-mandatory. (and even if you do they'll find an excuse to bring them back to life in a future game, LELIANA.) I think the gulf between modern JRPGs and modern WRPGs in terms of how they handle stories and protagonists is rapidly dwindling. The difference between doing Social Links in Persona and going around your keep in Dragon Age: Inquisition is pretty thin at this point. I grew up on old-school PC games so that certainly influences my feelings but I really don't think there's as huge a gap at this point. When I was playing FFVII and Fallout 1 they might as well have been entirely different species. Now? Eh. In terms of the RP options available to me I'm not seeing a huge difference. Edit: I also admit that, to me, a defining feature of WRPGs is less roleplaying and more the ability to complete missions is ways that are not killing people and that absolutely has been dwindling. New Vegas was the high point in recent memory as far as that goes. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 06:25
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NikkolasKing posted:It was almost hard for me to come back to JRPGs after I played my first WRPGs a year ago. I really missed that ability to RP and stuff. I hear the SMT games are really good about choices and decision making but they are odd ones out in JRPG Land so far as I know. Not really. Choice in most mainline SMT games amounts to getting to pick a bad end in Law or Chaos flavors, with only the Neutral/True Demon/etc. ending sending you through all of the game's story content and providing a satisfying conclusion. Devil Survivor's a bit better about it, but that's still the typical "route" system where the ending is determined simply by which of your buddies you like the most, provided you talked to them enough.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:42
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Well I have heard that from a lot of old-time WPRG players and you guys would definitely know better than me. The oldest WRPG I've played is KOTOR 1. Other people I've talked to have commented on how WRPGs are trying to be more "cinematic." Something like Fallout 3 is a good example where you could theoretically piss off and do whatever but the MQ is very railroaded. And Mass Effect 2 is another big example where you do have to work with Cerberus the whole game, which pissed off a lot of people for whatever reason. Although really ME1 didn't give you much more freedom, you were still a SPECTRE, you just had to decide if you were good at it or not. I dunno, I guess the advent of graphics and voice-acting has done it. They simply can't afford to do as much. You have some branching paths here and there and that's good enough for most people. And even though I didn't really like Inquisition, I thought BW did a great job with the Inquisitor. The "dialogue wheel" that has become their staple was definitely pretty bad in DA2 and even worse in ME3 but in Inquisition you got way more options for characterizing your PC. That was probably my favorite thing about the game. I also saw a ton of people on forums freaking the gently caress out at Fallout 4 spoilers. "I don't want to be a dad!" "i don't want to be straight!" etc.. People play WRPGs for the choice and immersion. At least that's what I think. If WRPGs lose either of those things, then i can't see any reason why I'd play them over a JRPG. Motto posted:Not really. Choice in most mainline SMT games amounts to getting to pick a bad end in Law or Chaos flavors, with only the Neutral/True Demon/etc. ending sending you through all of the game's story content and providing a satisfying conclusion. Devil Survivor's a bit better about it, but that's still the typical "route" system where the ending is determined simply by which of your buddies you like the most, provided you talked to them enough. Fair enough. Thanks for the info.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:47
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Motto posted:Not really. Choice in most mainline SMT games amounts to getting to pick a bad end in Law or Chaos flavors, with only the Neutral/True Demon/etc. ending sending you through all of the game's story content and providing a satisfying conclusion. Devil Survivor's a bit better about it, but that's still the typical "route" system where the ending is determined simply by which of your buddies you like the most, provided you talked to them enough. In practice this is about as much as you can actually effect the story in most WRPGs.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:50
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I hope that player choice doesn't eventually go away in WRPG's if only because that seems to be the only way we get any minority player characters in games, unfortunately very few developers seem likely to 'risk' doing a game with a black, gay or whatever main character without making it just one option.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:59
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You can get Suik 2 for cheap on PSN this week, and Suik 3 also but dont get that one
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Dec 31, 2015 07:02
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I've got an epic idea. A game with a black woman who is gay. I'll be a millionaire with this idea.
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Dec 31, 2015 07:05
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Quest For Glory II posted:You can get Suik 2 for cheap on PSN this week, and Suik 3 also but dont get that one
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Dec 31, 2015 07:22
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The Colonel posted:I really like some WRPGs, Fallout: New Vegas is def one of my favorite games ever, but I think generally unless it's a game that takes place in a really cool setting I wanna roleplay in, I prefer JRPGs for just having entertaining characters I have a fun time watching. If you did what I think you did, you need to make drat-sure you stop and fit the Little Jack with Subcannons when you get the opportunity. Otherwise the ship combat bosses will hurt a lot.
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Dec 31, 2015 07:47
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Someone cited Ultima a few pages back and I just feel like I gotta point out that classic WRPGs, like real ancient CRPGs, were no less stupid and nerdy in the sense anime-inspired JRPG stuff is. They just had a different pedigree: Ultima, Wizardry, and Might & Magic especially appealed to a now near-extinct breed of insufferable nerd, the sort that played tabletop wargames and AD&D, watched Star Trek and Monty Python, and loved newsgroup inside jokes and licensed sci-fi novel references. They not only didn't have good stories (or often any story), they were often almost impossible to take even remotely seriously the way they leaned on nerd pandering. It is easy to forget our fallen brethren and the games once made by and for them, but they remind us of what was, and what one day we shall be.
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Dec 31, 2015 08:19
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The Colonel posted:I really like some WRPGs, Fallout: New Vegas is def one of my favorite games ever, but I think generally unless it's a game that takes place in a really cool setting I wanna roleplay in, I prefer JRPGs for just having entertaining characters I have a fun time watching. that first major ship boss is probably the hardest in the game, and it's really important to make sure your ship equipment is up to date beforehand which kinda sucks since you aren't given much opportunity to do so
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Dec 31, 2015 09:46
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Nakar posted:Someone cited Ultima a few pages back and I just feel like I gotta point out that classic WRPGs, like real ancient CRPGs, were no less stupid and nerdy in the sense anime-inspired JRPG stuff is. They just had a different pedigree: Ultima, Wizardry, and Might & Magic especially appealed to a now near-extinct breed of insufferable nerd, the sort that played tabletop wargames and AD&D, watched Star Trek and Monty Python, and loved newsgroup inside jokes and licensed sci-fi novel references. They not only didn't have good stories (or often any story), they were often almost impossible to take even remotely seriously the way they leaned on nerd pandering. They're also not so big on being responsive to player choice, at least in the sense that most people talk about it today, compared to the WRPGs that most people associate with the term nowadays. There might be a big path split at some point in the game where you can pick from mutually exclusive sets of quests, but you don't generally get handed lots of little quests with meaningfully different possible resolutions, and to the extent that you did get choices the overall tone of the games encouraged thinking in terms of what you could get away with instead of what the right thing to do was. (The Ultima series tried to buck this trend starting with IV, but as you of all people know it didn't always take.) I remember back when the Fallout/Baldur's Gate generation of WRPGs first came out, a lot of players came into those with the same attitude as well; you could take the plot seriously and play along with it but you could also do quests for a reward and then kill the questgivers to rifle through their pockets, and the game wouldn't always even notice the difference. The games of the past decade or so have increasingly tightened things up and limited opportunities for that kind of mayhem for the sake of preventing players from making a laughing stock of the story and setting, and I mean I get the motivation for it but I do think there's a tradeoff there.
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Dec 31, 2015 10:34
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Nakar posted:Someone cited Ultima a few pages back and I just feel like I gotta point out that classic WRPGs, like real ancient CRPGs, were no less stupid and nerdy in the sense anime-inspired JRPG stuff is. They just had a different pedigree: Ultima, Wizardry, and Might & Magic especially appealed to a now near-extinct breed of insufferable nerd, the sort that played tabletop wargames and AD&D, watched Star Trek and Monty Python, and loved newsgroup inside jokes and licensed sci-fi novel references. They not only didn't have good stories (or often any story), they were often almost impossible to take even remotely seriously the way they leaned on nerd pandering. Not to mention, JRPGs really started with the original Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest's inspirations were Ultima and Wizardry. In any case, I wouldn't say JRPGs or WRPGs are superior to the other and as someone mentioned in the thread earlier, the barrier between the two is blurring a lot what with JRPGs becoming more open world and less linear while WRPGs are having more focus on individual characters in the game. I do find it funny when people stereotype all JRPGs as anime waifu games and then they go and praise something like Dragon Age or Mass Effect which practically are anime waifu games themselves. One of the funniest arguments I've ever had was when someone tried to convince me that Liara wasn't like something out of the kind of anime he despises, despite her being something like 16 years old who is really 100+ years old.
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Dec 31, 2015 13:22
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Mr. Fortitude posted:I do find it funny when people stereotype all JRPGs as anime waifu games and then they go and praise something like Dragon Age or Mass Effect which practically are anime waifu games themselves. One of the funniest arguments I've ever had was when someone tried to convince me that Liara wasn't like something out of the kind of anime he despises, despite her being something like 16 years old who is really 100+ years old. Bioware games are definitely the best example of waifu simulators but with western sensibilities, complete with very hit/miss romance scenes with terrible awkwardness. It should be pointed out though that the best-executed romances in the games (Liara, Jack, Garrus) had a lot of potential for terrible awkwardness that they managed to steer pretty clear of. It is weird that we're heading towards some nexus of open world RPG's with JRPG-like characterizations given that that is where both big WRPG's and JRPG's are heading if they're not already there in some cases.
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Dec 31, 2015 13:46
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Xenoblade Chronicles X is already there
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Dec 31, 2015 13:50
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Sakurazuka posted:Xenoblade Chronicles X is already there I can say with 100% certainty that it is the best modern open world game without auto-save.
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Dec 31, 2015 13:55
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There should be more games like Lufia 2. Varied puzzles, turn based combat, no interfering romance bullshit/ "waifu sim".
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Dec 31, 2015 14:24
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BadAstronaut posted:There should be more games like Lufia 2. Varied puzzles, turn based combat, no interfering romance bullshit/ "waifu sim". There should be a Lufia 2 with a "waifu sim"...
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Dec 31, 2015 14:27
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