Any RPG fans here?

[replayme]

Responding to the original topic, I don't play RPGs anymore as they are too time consuming, and I have way too many games that I could be getting on with instead...

[CMoon]

The only Wizardry game worth playing that's available in English is Tale of the Forsaken Land for PS2. It has the same fundamental game structure as Wizardry 1/2/3/5, but with vastly improved combat mechanics and dungeon design. Atlus understood what makes a game good more than the copy-paste cronies at Sir-tech ever did.

Obvious, but you mean 'on a console'. All of the original Wizardry games' native language was English. But yeah, now you're gonna need DosBox or something.

I know I've said it a million times, but for me 7 was the best by a mile.

[Mortificator]

No, I wasn't just talking about what's available on consoles. TotFL is the only decent Wizardry game that's ever been released in English on any format - I say "English" because I haven't played the Japanese-only games like Busin 0, so I don't know if they're any good or not. The first five Wizardry games were total crap. Read BareknuckleRoo's criticism of the original game with this in mind: Wizardy I actually had a tighter system than II through V. Wizardry VI through 8 weren't as bad, but I wouldn't consider them worth playing by a long shot (not that I'm attacking you for liking VII).

It's unfortunate that such poor games were so influential to Japanese RPGs. The genre would probably have been better without Dragon Quest.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I think Wizardry did a lot of things right in terms of how many options it offered for character customization - the Ultima series generally had much more polished gameplay, but didn't compare to how many choices you had in terms of character class and race combinations and such outside of Ultima Exodus. I disagree that they're not worth playing (it's fun to play old games to see what a genre was like back then) but admittedly you want to play the SNES port translated into English for 1-3; they've aged rather badly and will likely only appeal to people wanting a very hardcore dungeon crawl or who enjoy lengthy grinding in order to maximize character strength (takes quite a bit of effort to get a bunch of Ninjas or Samurai with high level gear and all Mage & Priest spells learned).

Wizardry V onwards are much more playable (SNES version is a good port). Admittedly, I bought Wizardry VII in one of those bargain software bins as a teenager but never got around to seriously playing it; I really ought to, it's sitting on my shelf looking so lonely. If I had to pick one, Wizardry 8 I'd say is very much a worthwhile play; I'm enjoying the massive character customization options so far, seems like there's a ton of replayability. Hell, it's possible to even solo the game from what I've read if you like (Ninja Faerie instakilling things with the Cane of Corpus looks hilarious ), albeit there are certainly some bugs and oddities that keep it from being the perfect RPG. Still, I'd actually say it's just as worthwhile if not moreso than the PS2 game, because of how the PS2 game seriously cut back on the character race/class options, the personality mechanic further restricting what sort of party combinations were viable if you wanted to keep everyone's trust levels up, as well as had a "gameover if your main character gets permakilled" mechanic. The party tactics options and music/animation quality are pretty awesome though. TotFL stays truer to the old games' roots, whereas Wizardry 8 is more unique, but both worthwhile to play.

Hopefully a fan translation or something comes out for the second PS2 game.

[CMoon]

No, I wasn't just talking about what's available on consoles. TotFL is the only decent Wizardry game that's ever been released in English on any format

Wow! Why do you like TotFL is particularly better than any of the sir-tech games?

[CMoon]

Hopped on my PS3 this morning to note an RPG by the guys who did Soldner-X (which I wasn't really a fan of.) Rainbow Moon (wow, great title) is a $15 jRPG that doesn't look like anything new, but perhaps could be a fun investment. Any of you got some insight into this?

Here's the IGN review: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/30/ ... oon-review

[Krimzon Kitzune]

*

[EmperorIng]

I have brought this dead thread to the Temple of Cant for resurrection.
MURMUR - CHANT - PRAY - INVOKE!

What? Turned to ashes?

Well, I didn't want to make a new topic, nor did I want to add to the general hodgepodge of the "NonShmup Play" thread, so I found this one!

A little shy of two months ago I purchased the first Suikoden for the PS1, and after a bit under 30 hours, I finally finished it. It might be the fastest I've turned around a traditional JRPG, at least in recent memory - just every now and then playing an hour or two before bed. I even got all 108 Characters, and thus the "best" ending - though I shamefully admit to peeking at a FAQ after a dozen+ hours or so - some of the more obscure Stars of Destiny seem to be pretty well hidden with some esoteric requirements. Most of the characters were waiting to join me, bar some special prerequisites.

One thing that makes this RPG stand out is there are no "sidequests" in the traditional sense... There is the main story, and THE sidequest, the recruitment of the 108 Stars of Destiny. The whole game is more or less built around finding all the characters - the traditional "find me x, y, and z" or "take this scroll to Joe and bring me 4 rat guts" or whatever. This feels very fresh and enjoyable, as not only is it to your benefit to have many different characters for many different situations, but finding new quirky NPCs and seeing what they add to your "army" is half the fun, even if they are all more or less one-note characters - by necessity, as it would be impossible to develop such a large cast.

What makes progression feel so good in this game is that -despite being a pretty easy game- it is structured differently than most JRPGs. Most have you start at "home", which you'll never go back to (outside of curiosity), and constantly push forward to new lands and locations, with tougher monsters and better loot - constant incline. Suikoden after a few hours gives you a "home" that you are constantly coming back to, checking up on, and seeing the new additions and improvements. The game is centered around building up your army's headquarters. Every town typically has new members to recruit and find, and some show up in older locations - so you might end up traveling to early towns to see if new people have showed up. Recruits are either party members, add shops and services that cut down on backtracking to ancillary areas, or add mini games or cosmetic improvements.

I think Konami wisely saw that cramming as much extra, one-off, and otherwise nonessential content into the game worked into its favor. With a relatively low difficulty, you nonetheless have a lot to do to keep you entertained: Stars to recruit, weapons to upgrade, runes to level, different characters to try out in combat, army battles and duels (cosmetic additions that nonetheless add a lot to the overall "feel" of the game) to win, lore books to find, paints to collect, sound options, "Unite Attacks" to discover... It makes the game come alive, and keep Suikoden from being just a "one and done" or "move from town a to town b and fight boss" affair.

I think this game might have the best experience-point leveling-up system I have experienced. Every character gets a level at 1000 EXP, but the amount an enemy gives is affected by your level, its level, and how many people are in your party. This rubberbanding system allows any character who is dozens of levels behind to quickly be on par with your party, level-wise, if you take them to a new area and fight maybe 6 or so random encounters. It's great. When the game actually let me make a full party instead of forcing certain characters on me, it was fun to take characters I never used, bring them to a tough area, and watch them go from level 20 to level 50 in a few minutes. Progression! You gotta love watching those numbers go up, and up, and up. Your characters are always leveling up in Suikoden so it makes battling feel less tedious. Battles become trivial though once your main character learns AoE spells that are either guaranteed insta-death or do massive damage. At the very least, this makes getting some characters up to level a very painless process. Also painless: despite a fairly aggressive encounter rate, after a few levels your characters can run guaranteed from any encounter, making backtracking a cinch (especially in large dungeons you have to revisit to find new characters).

Once I learned towards the end of the game that some of my characters' stats and equipment could carry over if I met certain prerequisites, I started doing some mindless grinding and exploits to bump up my main contenders past level 60 and upgrade their weapon stats. That's probably the only time in the game, save one or two moments, that I felt it necessary to grind (and for purely optional reasons). That probably took around 3ish hours that I added on, meaning I could have really beaten the game in 25-26 hours instead of 30.

Suikoden PROs:
+ Fast-paced battle system, generous experience distribution, and easy Run option
+ Focusing the game on 108 characters to collect makes exploration addicting and gives you a constant feedback loop
+ Cosmetic battle scenarios (army battles and 1v1 duels) are easy but add a lot of atmosphere to the game

Suikoden CONs:
- Main plot is not-very developed, nor are most of its characters
- Game might be too easy to fully exploit all of its extra content
- Too few opportunities to load up your party with weird combos; frequently forced to use several certain characters
- Minor gripe, but sloppy translation: several noticeable spelling errors, and in a few cases what appears to be the translator or coder's personal notes (!!!) end up in the in-game script. It isn't "Star Ocean 2 bad," but it can occasionally creep and take you out of things.*

I am really looking forward to jumping into Suikoden 2 now. The game looks like it polishes up some things, adds more duels and army battles, and improves on the main plot (which is probably the weakest thing about the first game).

*Can provide for some unintentionally charming bad Engrish lines. "See the power of the science!" You tell 'em, Mathiu.
Also of note: the character Kuromimi had his name accurately translated as "Black Ears" in the game's manual, which contains numerous errors of its own (e.g.: over the roster of Imperial villains, it erroneously reads "Introducing the Liberation Army" - which is YOUR faction).

[scrilla4rella]

You're in for a real treat with Suikoden 2. It's prob my fav JRPG. Music, graphics, story, all are top-shelf. It's a little slow going at first so just stick with with

[Marc]

I hadn't played one in well over a decade, but I'm on the 4th disc of Lost Odyssey and have really enjoyed it. Only disappointment is that the battle system hasn't really evolved in complexity much. Recommendations of something similar would be very welcome.

[Necronopticous]

You're in for a real treat with Suikoden 2. It's prob my fav JRPG. Music, graphics, story, all are top-shelf. It's a little slow going at first so just stick with with

Suikoden 2 is a God game. The story goes that Murayama waited to create it until he had the experience of creating Suikoden 1 (basically the test run) so that the game design could live up to the concept. Absolute masterclass. I still get chills watching the black & white introductory credits that show Riou, Nanami, and Jowy growing up. Why can't we have nice things like this anymore?

[gbaplayer]

I love RPGs. It is the genre i play most and i am currently into Lost Sphear on Switch and finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 recently.

[FinalBaton]

I love RPGs. It is the genre i play most and i am currently into Lost Sphear on Switch and finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 recently.

What are your thoughts on Lost Sphear so far?

[gbaplayer]

It´s a great game and definetely giving me nostalgic vibes. I´m not sure if it is better than I am Setsuna, but overall it´s pretty awesome if you like classic JRPGs from the good old days. Story is really good, battles are fun with the Setsuna system and the Vulcosuits and i also like the graphics. You should get this game for sure. Oh and do i need to mention that you can play the game on the go with the Switch.

[__SKYe]

This seems like the proper place to post this: CRPG Book Project was released yesterday so some of you may be interested.
It is a massive 528 pages PDF (completely free, by the way) that contains everything from the early PLATO games up to current AAA CRPGs.

I just started reading it myself, and it's looking pretty damn good.

[Mischief Maker]

This seems like the proper place to post this: CRPG Book Project was released yesterday so some of you may be interested.
It is a massive 528 pages PDF (completely free, by the way) that contains everything from the early PLATO games up to current AAA CRPGs.

I just started reading it myself, and it's looking pretty damn good.

Bah! You beat me to it!

[Xyga]

Just to be clear before I click the download button, for the people who wrote this, CRPG = western RPG type of games only, right?

[Mischief Maker]

Mostly. Games like Final Fantasy and Dragon's Dogma are included.

[Xyga]

Had no choice but to download it to check the list and, well, as I suspected the Japanese games have the space equivalent of what I'd call a tiny honourable mention.

It is indeed massively dedicated to western-type PC games, guess it'll at least make half of the audience happy.

(edit: no I'm not hoping the two 'sides' will reunite one day under a single book, some things never change)

[__SKYe]

Bah! You beat me to it!

Amusingly enough, I came across it by pure chance, while I was reading some articles on Gamasutra written by the book's author/editor, Felipe Pepe, and followed a link to the project that was posted on one of his articles, and the book happened to be set for release the very next day (this was on Feb 4th, and book was released on the 5th). Talk about a coincidence.

Had no choice but to download it to check the list and, well, as I suspected the Japanese games have the space equivalent of what I'd call a tiny honourable mention.

It is massively dedicated to western-type PC games, guess it'll at least make half of the audience happy.

Yeah, the focus is strictly on western RPGs.

[drauch]

Ah, interesting. Anyone here check out the CRPG Addict blog? He's playing through essentially everything, so it's neat to see some stuff I'd rather... not play, and instead the evolution of the genre.

[FinalBaton]

It´s a great game and definetely giving me nostalgic vibes. I´m not sure if it is better than I am Setsuna, but overall it´s pretty awesome if you like classic JRPGs from the good old days. Story is really good, battles are fun with the Setsuna system and the Vulcosuits and i also like the graphics. You should get this game for sure. Oh and do i need to mention that you can play the game on the go with the Switch.

I haven't played setsuna either, lol. I'm tempted to try both now

[WelshMegalodon]

Oh, so it's finally been released! Good to know. Being taken seriously is going to be difficult without proofreading, though.

Had no choice but to download it to check the list and, well, as I suspected the Japanese games have the space equivalent of what I'd call a tiny honourable mention.

It is indeed massively dedicated to western-type PC games, guess it'll at least make half of the audience happy.

(edit: no I'm not hoping the two 'sides' will reunite one day under a single book, some things never change)

1. Relatively few people interested in this sort of thing speak Japanese and the Japanese 'retro gaming' scene is, from what I've heard, hostile to outsiders. What's more, the console side is pretty well documented by hipster weebs and thus mostly outside the scope of the author's project. (Many readers of the CRPG Addict's blog, a similar project that actually lent many of its screenshots to this one, will tell you the same thing.)

2. The author has made several attempts to bring Japanese RPGs to his readers' attention, with varying degrees of success. So it isn't like he's ignoring them completely.

3. As I've said in the past, the CRPG/JRPG divide is muddling at best, and symptomatic of how poorly informed everyone is about the genre.

Would highly recommend the Addict, by the way. He finished up Dragon Knight III not too long ago and actually found it to have some redeeming traits, although he despised the dialogue. There were some claims that the localization team butchered the script, but nothing conclusive, as likely as it would have been at the time.

[qmish]

Does it have Anachronox article? Also Rage of Mages / Evil Islands?

[drauch]

Been reading through it at work to see if there's much I've missed. Liking the overall presentation and how much is included, but it is a bit jarring that it's full of opinions rather than just objective content.

[Xyga]

1. Relatively few people interested in this sort of thing speak Japanese

What? No need for Japanese with the official localizations and fans translations there's truckloads of games available in english and other languages.

and the Japanese 'retro gaming' scene is, from what I've heard, hostile to outsiders. What's more, the console side is pretty well documented by hipster weebs and thus mostly outside the scope of the author's project.

Well well well, that's wrong and I sense some bias-induced passive agressivity here. Ok let's fight!
I've played my first RPGs about 30 years ago and though I have a strong preference for the japanese 'school' I can't ignore that I've always seen a majority in both demographics mostly ignore and increasingly despise each other's taste in games. It was never one-sided.
From my experience though I've also seen that the western english-speaking RPG player demographics has an historically stronger attachment to its western RPG culture (not limited to games of course) and is definitely the demographics ignoring the other (infulenced by japan) the stronger, ignoring console rpg weaboo peasants, basically in the same fashion as in the generalist 'pc master race vs console peasants' meme.

Well it's not everywhere the same, in my language where there's a decent community relatively to its small size and some excellent sites (well it's only really legendra today) the classification of RPGs is different, for instance C-RPGs include both western and japanese, it's by gameplay/design type that the games are classified in subcategories, not primarily by origin or platform which are only secondary filters.

2. The author has made several attempts to bring Japanese RPGs to his readers' attention, with varying degrees of success. So it isn't like he's ignoring them completely.

Yes again I agree not every RPG player stands only with one or the other 'side', thankfully, the two demographics have a lot of games culture biased members but there are also lots who just enjoy their preference without looking down on everything not it.

3. As I've said in the past, the CRPG/JRPG divide is muddling at best, and symptomatic of how poorly informed everyone is about the genre.

Poorly informed indeed. I must say I don't know much of the western school despite several attempts at getting into some titles over the years. And I've seen enough players from the other side struggling even more to give a fuck about my weeaboo games. But I'm being redundant.
Putting our ignorance aside; 'muddling'? I don't think so, although many shades and variations can blur the lines there are clear main areas of game design where japanese developers borrowed, modified, emphasized or suppressed and also innovated to create their own distiguished 'school' of the genre.

Would highly recommend the Addict, by the way. He finished up Dragon Knight III not too long ago and actually found it to have some redeeming traits, although he despised the dialogue. There were some claims that the localization team butchered the script, but nothing conclusive, as likely as it would have been at the time.

I didn't know the guy and that book will certainly be useful for me, maybe I'll finally have a revelation for a game or two after reading? Though I kind of doubt it since I've tried at least a bit of most of the great 'names'.
Maybe it'll never be my style and that's how things will remain...

[FinalBaton]

It's sad that some western players dismiss jrpg completely. Yes it started with western rpgs, but the japanese brought so much to the table...

Also, what's the C in CRPG? Computer?

[Xyga]

Ah good question, for me the 'C' is for classical (A for action, T for tactical, D for dungeon, etc)

[ryu]

I´m not sure if it is better than I am Setsuna

So it's no good...

I am Setsuna seems super bland and I haven't seen anyone praising it. Can't complain though, I have enoufh of a backlog without Lost Sphear on the plate.

Also, what's the C in CRPG? Computer?

Some people use it for Character RPG, describing games that have a stronger focus on character stat development.

[drauch]

It's traditionally Computer. That's why for instance all the games in that 'book' are Computer RPGs. Kinda silly terminology today and a bit confusing (as evidenced!), but now it does sorta encompass the 'classical' age as well.