What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
Licorice
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

Vanguard wrote:FromSoft games are good because how good you are matters 10x more than how good your character is
Squire Grooktook wrote:Fromsoft games are good because they find clever ways to make all the abstract, statistical elements of your character meaningfully interact with the moment to moment gameplay and represents their growth as an adventurer through gameplay.
In the case of Dark Souls, there's still a few contradictions

One is how utterly unstylish high level play is. Things like low level runs or no equipment runs or speed runs just look awful.

The other is that "optional content" yields the player a handicap, and will thus be avoided in high level play. Contrast with e.g. shmups where optional content (usually) yields the player great risk and higher score.
Vanguard wrote:This definition is the most useful because you can hear "RPG" and instantly know you're dealing with some no-skill grindfest garbage
Sad but true.

Doesn't have to be that way. I've been asking myself the question "what's good about dungeon crawlers anyway?"

At its Atari 2600 simplest a crawler would be like you walk through a maze with a meter and every step lowers the meter a fixed amount. When the meter reaches 0 you go back to the beginning and it replenishes and lengthens (this is the "numbers go up" part).

Not very good.

A step up is you have a meter but with every step in the maze the game rolls a dice and figures how much to lower it, or in rarer occurrences even raise it a little. So now when you're running low there's a strong gambling aspect. This is basically Shining in the Darkness or the first Dragon Quest lol.

Still not good, but very addictive, which depending on your point of view might even be worse. So how can you make it good?

Well you make the meter complex (i.e. composed of parts) and configuring it a puzzle, which is the "key" to let you unlock new frontiers in the maze. It still grows every time you go back to the beginning like before, but *only* after making new progress (this is crucial, IMO, and almost never done).

Why have the meter expand at all? Why not just have it at its maximum (or any fixed amount, really) to begin with? Well it's a different puzzle. Using a more concrete example, configuring my level 6 party of 8 in LoT2 is not the same thing at all as configuring my level 80 party of 35.

So why have it grow monotonically? Why not just throw a random puzzle of this nature (meter of different maximum length and composition) at the player? Well I agree, partially, at least. Coincidentally JRPGs kind of started going down this path at the beginning of the 90s, where they'd stick you, the player, with n characters at x level and you'd just have to figure out how to make it work. Sadly they usually left the escape hatch open and let you go level them up and overcome your challenges that way. But anyway the reason why you might prefer monotonic expansion is that it better suits learning. If e.g. you just gave the player the full roster, 1 million money, and enough XP to hit level 100 in LoT2 at the start and a challenge that expected you to make full use of that they'd just spend hours and hours in the menus trying different things and eventually get bored. But at some point you do want to give them this kind of thing. Hence why monotonic growth isn't a bad thing.
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Squire Grooktook
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Licorice wrote:
Vanguard wrote:FromSoft games are good because how good you are matters 10x more than how good your character is
Squire Grooktook wrote:Fromsoft games are good because they find clever ways to make all the abstract, statistical elements of your character meaningfully interact with the moment to moment gameplay and represents their growth as an adventurer through gameplay.
In the case of Dark Souls, there's still a few contradictions

One is how utterly unstylish high level play is. Things like low level runs or no equipment runs or speed runs just look awful.

The other is that "optional content" yields the player a handicap, and will thus be avoided in high level play. Contrast with e.g. shmups where optional content (usually) yields the player great risk and higher score.
What is high level play though?

Is clearing it faster high level play? Is using a particular build to do so as fast and efficiently as possible "higher level play"? Or is it higher level to beat it with self imposed handicaps? Is it high level play to delete your save file when you die for the real permadeath experience?

The answer is that since the game does not grade or rank you in any way, there is no canon "high level play" and it's up to players to decide to play how they like and find what's most fun and rewarding for them. This too is of the essence of rpg, where creating your own experience is part of the fun. RPG's are again, about creating or simulating a character and having a journey with them. Refusing to use a powerful weapon in a shmup or a fighting game is tabboo and against the spirit of "playing to win", but in an rpg its perfectly valid to say "my backstory for this guy is that he had a traumatic experience with magic, so he doesn't use magic. Ever, even if it's useful".

One potential build or route being easier to clear with in Dark Souls (or any "real" rpg) is not a flaw. It's a strength.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

Yeah I agree in the absence of the game scoring or grading players in some way high level play is whatever players make of it.

There is a kind of unwritten rule that it's low level runs for JRPGs. Like if you beat your favorite turn based JRPG with level 5 characters you're better than someone who beats it with level 10 characters.

Equipment restrictions etc. makes sense too as it's just the natural result of "yeah you beat it using X? That's too easy, anyone can do that, show us you can do it without X"

For SRPGs it's always been LTC runs, and at some point games started acknowledging that so you get graded based on turn counts in e.g. most Fire Emblem games.
Refusing to use a powerful weapon in a shmup or a fighting game is tabboo and against the spirit of "playing to win"
True. There's always exceptions though. I've been playing RSG recently and I found a sword only run online. Very stylish, very impressive.
It's up to players to decide to play how they like and find what's most fun and rewarding for them. This too is of the essence of rpg, where creating your own experience is part of the fun. RPG's are again, about creating or simulating a character and having a journey with them
Right, this takes us back to the discussion about taking the meaning of "role playing" literally.

I'm not going to deny sandbox or toybox type video "games" can be fun. They are, as evidenced by their huge popularity. But a toybox, AFAICT, goes contrary to *game*. Or rather a game necessarily constrains toys. For example, a child (or adult, lol) might pick up some miniatures and move them around, arrange them in formations, then move them around some more or knock some over and remove them from their field of play etc. and it might all make sense in their head and they might be having the time of their life, but this isn't a game. It's play, but it's not a game. if you want to make a game out of miniatures, you end up making some kind of rigid rules around them, and a goal.
Last edited by Licorice on Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Squire Grooktook
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Licorice wrote:Yeah I agree in the absence of the game scoring or grading players in some way high level play is whatever players make of it.

There is a kind of unwritten rule that it's low level runs for JRPGs.
It's been done, but it's also kind of known that in such games a low level run is going to be painfully time consuming and tedious unless you're using some sort of enormous bug or exploit. Also just want to point out that Dark Souls even telegraphs that you are not supposed to be fighting without a weapon via the first boss being a curbstomp before you get your sword back.

But yes, this is another reason why I think RPG's in general shouldn't be thought of in terms of "skill", or at least skill should be thought of as secondary to the goal or experience of the game as a whole.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................

Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
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Licorice
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

Squire Grooktook wrote: It's been done, but it's also kind of known that in such games a low level run is going to be painfully time consuming and tedious unless you're using some sort of enormous bug or exploit.
Right like, when you do almost no damage but there's a way to keep yourself alive during the battle or whatever. Yeah that sucks lol. IMO it's a sign of bad design.
Squire Grooktook wrote:But yes, this is another reason why I think RPG's in general shouldn't be thought of in terms of "skill", or at least skill should be thought of as secondary to the goal or experience of the game as a whole.
Sure. That's how most people enjoy RPGs. Comfort food gaming where the headcanon, or actual canon, and role playing come first (like the example of the child and his miniatures in my post above) and it doesn't matter that it breaks down somehow when you try and actually make a game out of it.

Maybe that's not fair, you *can* make good games out of good enough toyboxes, but it requires the player to also roleplay designer or dungeon master the whole time, and frankly I've never seen it done. Usually it's like "heh well this self imposed restriction is making things hard, time to throw it out the window and cheese the next fight". And why should it be? It requires a lot of thought, might as well create a mod or a game of your own if you go to these lengths.

But yeah there's also a very small (and IMO noble) niche for RPGs that are about the kind of "skill" I described earlier, where there's some onus on the designers for the experience rather than just offloading it all to the player and telling them "make your own fun".
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Licorice wrote:
vol.2 wrote:
Squire Grooktook wrote: It's definitely a roleplaying game
Does it have role playing elements aside from items and player stats? Like, for example, does it have a main story that you play through in the role of a character, completing a quest and driving the story as you go?
This is also an interesting topic.

Wizardry has none of the above, but IMO it is most definitely a computer role playing game.

To me video game RPG games (lol) branched off from tabletop RPGs 40 years ago and that's it. The acronym is no longer descriptive, just vestigal.

That's not to say there's no peeking over the fence. Video game RPGs are made with updated D&D rulesets all the time, after all, and every now and then you get a designer who says "you know, I want my game to feel more like the tabletop experience!".
Oh finally you wrote a post I can nod my head to :lol:

Also if it merely has number-go-up, we can say " RPG elements " :wink:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

vol.2 wrote:My point is that you don't have to choose a single gaming mechanic to be the sole definition of the CRPG. Is someone holding a gun to your head and telling you to pick a single gaming mechanic to represent all RPGs from now until the end of time forever hold your peace?

I didn't think so. (I hope not)

So why in the hell are you insisting on it?

The "numbers going up" thing is not without merit. It's definitely the one mechanic that you can pick out of a big crowd in a whole bunch of games as an RPG-like aspect. However, that doesn't mean it's the only RPG-like aspect, or the only one that matters.

When you look at the groups of RPGs on various systems (let's just for the sake of argument look at Square and Atlus), you can clearly see that they have styles that have built their own personalities, and created their own RPG ecosystems. Each one of those companies has created a formula, which in turn created an identifiable set of mechanics.
A strict definition for RPG is more useful than a loose one. 99% of the video games descended from D&D have experience levels and/or equipment systems. The exceptions are such a tiny niche that they aren't worth considering when looking broadly at the supergenre. They might as well adopt a different name. Call them digital TTRPGs or just story RPGs maybe.

With that said I wouldn't use such a strict definition for CRPGs. CRPGs are the subgenre of RPGs that dominated the western hemisphere's output up until around the turn of the millennium, and they have their own distinct traits. They tend to have first person, top down, or 3/4 view isometric graphics, lots of dialogue options, branching quests, open world freedom, terrible combat systems and worse UIs.
Licorice wrote:Well you make the meter complex (i.e. composed of parts) and configuring it a puzzle, which is the "key" to let you unlock new frontiers in the maze. It still grows every time you go back to the beginning like before, but *only* after making new progress (this is crucial, IMO, and almost never done).
This is one reason why I prefer RPGs where treasure hunting is the key to becoming powerful and experience points do little to nothing. If you want a high level magic sword you have to explore a new area of the high level dungeon and face the dangers therein. It rewards exciting behavior rather than dull repetition. I mentioned Demon King Chronicle and Black Souls a bit earlier, this is something both excel at. Dark Souls is pretty good in that regard too. Best way to power up fast is to fight bosses and keep pushing forward.
Squire Grooktook wrote:What is high level play though?

Is clearing it faster high level play? Is using a particular build to do so as fast and efficiently as possible "higher level play"? Or is it higher level to beat it with self imposed handicaps? Is it high level play to delete your save file when you die for the real permadeath experience?
All of those are clearly higher level than a slow playthrough that involves a bunch of grinding and a bunch of deaths. As for which is highest, that depends on your personal standards.
Blinge wrote:Oh finally you wrote a post I can nod my head to :lol:

Also if it merely has number-go-up, we can say " RPG elements " :wink:
Dragon Quest 1 is almost entirely about grinding experience levels and equipment. It even explicitly refuses to let you make dialogue decisions that would lead the story on a different path. By the standard you've presented, we should say that Dragon Quest is not an RPG but merely has RPG elements. Are you willing to do this? I'm not.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Vanguard wrote: A strict definition for RPG is more useful than a loose one. 99% of the video games descended from D&D have experience levels and/or equipment systems. The exceptions are such a tiny niche that they aren't worth considering when looking broadly at the supergenre. They might as well adopt a different name. Call them digital TTRPGs or just story RPGs maybe.
What you are espousing is a simplistic definition, not a strict one. A strict one would be a laundry-list of criteria that must be met to be considered an RPG.

I just don't agree. I think there needs to be a "medium" level of criteria, and there should be special-mentions for any group of criteria that represents an established RPG sub-genre.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

Vanguard wrote: With that said I wouldn't use such a strict definition for CRPGs. CRPGs are the subgenre of RPGs that dominated the western hemisphere's output up until around the turn of the millennium, and they have their own distinct traits. They tend to have first person, top down, or 3/4 view isometric graphics, lots of dialogue options, branching quests, open world freedom, terrible combat systems and worse UIs.
IMO 80s WRPGs and mid 90s to early 2000s WRPGs are completely different beasts. For example, I can't recall a single dice roll or skill check on a dialogue choice in Ultima, Wizardry or Might and Magic. Maybe some Goldbox game? Can't recall there either although I've only played three of them. Or much branching dialogue at all, for that matter.

Fallout is the turning point, IMO.
Vanguard wrote: This is one reason why I prefer RPGs where treasure hunting is the key to becoming powerful and experience points do little to nothing. If you want a high level magic sword you have to explore a new area of the high level dungeon and face the dangers therein. It rewards exciting behavior rather than dull repetition. I mentioned Demon King Chronicle and Black Souls a bit earlier, this is something both excel at. Dark Souls is pretty good in that regard too. Best way to power up fast is to fight bosses and keep pushing forward.
It's a very old trope beginning with Druaga, one of the first explicit takes on Wizardry from the Japanese. There's no experience there, and progress is predicated on finding treasures, which also make you more powerful.

Hydlide then added XP back, and IMO it worked well there. It functioned as a key to enter more dangerous areas, or where you could enter them cause nothing blocked your path, as a means of facilitating Pacman gameplay. Gotta avoid those monsters in the maze while getting the treasure. In some ways it did better than Druaga at its explicit goal of being a Pacman dungeon crawler. It did succumb to the problem you mention of rewarding repetitious behavior. You'd have to clear the same few screens 10 or so times, but I guess it was fun figuring out the best screens to farm XP given your level (you get 0 from monsters below your level). Could have been fixed quite easily by simply making it require less XP to level up, and this would have been preferable to doing away with XP altogether, IMO.

There's a modern take on Hydlide explicitly called Fairune that does just this. I'm yet to play it, but it seems to fix all the problems while keeping the salient points of the design. Seems like a good template or formula for XP in an "open world" RPG.

And while I haven't yet cleared Xanadu (I played it after playing Xanadu Next for a reference point, and once I got the hang of it had trouble putting it down), it does this interesting thing where levelling up increases resource costs, so you have to be careful not to level up too early i.e. it's actually optimal to clear some dungeons at a lower level than your XP would allow.

Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on these early JARPGs.

Anyway I feel bad for shitting up this thread. I feel like CIT's awesome post about isometric racers got drowned in this discussion. Maybe mods can split it off and merge it with the Jarpig thread or some other thread?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by WelshMegalodon »

Wasteland had skill checks in 1988. I remember you being able to pick locks to open doors or just attempt to bust them down.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

WelshMegalodon wrote:Wasteland had skill checks in 1988. I remember you being able to pick locks to open doors or just attempt to bust them down.
Well, if you want to get into it that deep, Quest For Glory had skill checks as well. There are many actions you are forced to increase your skills in order to complete (climbing, throwing mostly), but level stats also have a serious effect on combat.

Combat is clunky, but it's not too bad for 1989 and it being an action/adventure RPG and all.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Herr Schatten »

So I finally finished Shantae (GBC). It's a deeply flawed game. In no way it's worth the money the cart is going for these days.

The sprites are all very cute and brilliantly animated, and the four dungeon-type areas are actually well-constructed, with some nice puzzles along the way, but that's about it. There's just too much stuff that doesn't really work or is downright annoying.

- The viewpoint is zoomed-in too much (no doubt to show more of those lovely animations), so you often fall into insta-kill spikes after walking down a ledge or bump into enemies you couldn't see coming.
- Overworld areas are too large with too little variety, which makes navigating them unnecessarily confusing and not fun at all.
- Regular enemies have way too much health. Some of them take 5-6 hits where 1-2 would have sufficed. Worse yet, if it's night time in the game, their health doubles, so some enemies actually take a dozen hits before they go down.
- The day and night cycle serves no real purpose. It just doubles enemies' health, annoyingly. Additionally, there are fireflies hidden in the overworld areas that are only visible at night. But you don't really need to collect them as they only give you a healing dance, and there are plenty of healing items lying around already.
- The dance-to-transform mechanic is cute and all, but if you have to change forms repeatedly it really breaks the pace.
- Two of the four animal forms (elephant and spider) are severely underused. Elephant is only good for opening some shortcuts you end up never using, and spider is (almost, see below) obsolete once you acquire the harpy transformation.
- The final boss fight could have been good. There are lots of different attacks that actually take some skill to dodge. Unless you have collected the spider venom item. In that case you can just shoot the boss from a distance without much effort at all.

So yeah, not recommended.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Vanguard wrote: Dragon Quest 1 is almost entirely about grinding experience levels and equipment. It even explicitly refuses to let you make dialogue decisions that would lead the story on a different path. By the standard you've presented, we should say that Dragon Quest is not an RPG but merely has RPG elements. Are you willing to do this? I'm not.
I wasn't making an exclusionary point - I was merely saying games that are something else but have numbers go up can be said to have RPG elements. It's a convenient use that is good for communication. I prefer function over form when it comes to choosing words in this context tbh.

As for your challenge, if that's what it was; I was merely pointing out how "rpg elements" is used.
But.. well if DQ1 has nothing but said RPG elements, which it doesn't. Then well, it's a game comprised entirely of RPG elements, therefore it's an RPg. :lol:

Get outta here with making me say 'therefore,' Vanguard! :mrgreen:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BIL »

Licorice wrote:Anyway I feel bad for shitting up this thread. I feel like CIT's awesome post about isometric racers got drowned in this discussion.
I shamelessly nabbed it for the upcoming R2RMKF index update, because I like to sneak in a bit of hardcore 2D racing, so it'll be there at least. :cool: An under-loved genre indeed.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sengoku Strider »

I think there are a few rosetta stones being missed in this jrpg debate.

The first is that outside of otaku importing foreign books, tabletop roleplaying was absent from Japan in the late 1970s/early 80s. Dungeons & Dragons wasn't released there until 1985, and gained traction after Dragon Quest did a lot to popularize the concept of the rpg.

So the foundations of what 'rpg' means in Japan were laid down by Wizardry and Ultima on imported Apple II computers (it's very telling that Falcom started out as an Apple II importer), which were expensive and kinda lacked the ability to adequately display Japanese, so they weren't widely adopted at the consumer level. But, these games gave birth to the rpg on Japanese computers with Dungeon, The Black Onyx and various halfway attempts across 1983-84. They were released into a niche domestic computer scene (home computers were expensive AF in Japan in the 80s - we're talking the equivalent of $3000 for the bottom-end model PC-8800, at a time when the average salary was $30k) in which almost nobody had even heard of the concept of the rpg before. So right from the start, you have the skeletons of D&D's tropes and ruleset - absent anything else - being extracted and boiled down to the limitations of 64k RAM, then translated across cultures in a pre-internet, pre-Google Translate world. So saying "rpg means numbers going up" actually has some validity in the case of Japan. The pretending-to-be-an-elf thing just wasn't part of the form that initially made it across the Pacific.

The other key thing is Tower of Druaga, from early 1984. If you're looking for a Souls ancestor, cross this with Castlevania's animation priority gameplay and Ocarina of Time's 3D lock on, slash & roll combat and you're most of the way there. There are times when I feel like if you understand Donkey Kong, Druaga, Xevious, Spartan-X & Wizardry, you basically understand 85% of Japanese games from the mid-80s onward.

Druaga is incredibly obtuse, was a massive arcade hit, and required shared community problem-solving to get anywhere. Like, if you don't defeat the magicians on floor 44 in an exact order (which is not communicated to the player in any way), you won't get the balance scales. If you don't get the balance scales, instead of getting Excalibur, strongest sword in the game on floor 45, you get a crappy useless thing called the evil sword that does hardly any damage. On top of that, the game cruelly trolls you by poisoning you if you open the sword's chest, even if you do have the balance. The only way around that is to find an antidote which only appears if you defeat the coloured knights on that floor in a specific order, likewise not communicated to the player. Then on floor 46, you can only get the necklace which grants you immunity to dragon fire if you walk around the edge of the maze and touch all four corners, then...

There's 60 floors of this nonsense and player-trolling, and like the Souls games nobody was figuring this all out without a lot of info sharing. But what's more, its arcade-isization of the general semiotics around the fantasy rpg directly inspired Hydlide, and they in turn directly inspired Dragon Quest and The Legend of Zelda, which in turn inspired Final Fantasy and Ys, and so on.

So if you combine the rpgs-are-stats origins of the genre in Japan with Druaga's direct control & more colourful & cartoony arcade visuals, you kind of see where it all comes from, and how it became distinct from the Western rpgs-are-stats-plus-pretending-to-be-an-elf-but-everything's-brown-and-sometimes-green approach. It wasn't a case of a bunch of guys sitting around trying to dumb down AD&D for console owning 10 year olds, as seems to be the impression of some crpg enthusiasts.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ghegs »

I had bought Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth over a year ago when it was still in Early Access and on sale, but didn't play it back then, because I wanted to wait for the full game. Well, it was released a few days ago and I've now played through it, all 5 and a half hours of it, in one day.

Damn gorgeous pixels and animation, but the stage layouts are kind of meh and samey all through the game. At times it feels like it's just a constant repeat horizontal corridors going to a vertical corridor going to three other horizontal corridors. Symphony of the Night it is not.

The combat is fun enough. There's a bit of an Ikaruga-esque system where you're always either attuned to Wind or Fire magic, and during that time you're immune to attacks of that type and deal that type of elemental damage. There are a few boss fights and short platforming sections where you need to change the magic type to make it out, but I don't think it's utilized as much or as well as it could've been. At times it felt like I was playing a run 'n gun because I was just sitting under a boss, holding up to aim the melee attacks upwards, and going to town on the attack button.

A decent amount of melee weapons and bows are available, some are found and others can be purchased. But there's really no need to ever purchase anything, the discovered weapons tend to be better.

So, kind of an easy and short game (for a Metroidvania) but still good times. Maybe wait for a sale?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Fascinating post, Strider and points well made.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

vol.2 wrote:What you are espousing is a simplistic definition, not a strict one. A strict one would be a laundry-list of criteria that must be met to be considered an RPG.

I just don't agree. I think there needs to be a "medium" level of criteria, and there should be special-mentions for any group of criteria that represents an established RPG sub-genre.
It's a lot stricter than "it's part of an arbitrary gestalt that may well include half of all games" or "it's a game where you play a role, whatever that means." None of that tells you anything about what kind of game you're playing.
Blinge wrote:I wasn't making an exclusionary point - I was merely saying games that are something else but have numbers go up can be said to have RPG elements. It's a convenient use that is good for communication. I prefer function over form when it comes to choosing words in this context tbh.

As for your challenge, if that's what it was; I was merely pointing out how "rpg elements" is used.
But.. well if DQ1 has nothing but said RPG elements, which it doesn't. Then well, it's a game comprised entirely of RPG elements, therefore it's an RPg. :lol:

Get outta here with making me say 'therefore,' Vanguard! :mrgreen:
That makes sense. I use the phrase "RPG elements" when making numbers go up is only a minor part of the game, like how 3d brawlers like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta usually have character progression systems, but they aren't really important to the games and most people do the RPG stuff once and then use the same save file for future playthroughs so they don't have to do it again.
Sengoku Strider wrote:Druaga is incredibly obtuse, was a massive arcade hit, and required shared community problem-solving to get anywhere. Like, if you don't defeat the magicians on floor 44 in an exact order (which is not communicated to the player in any way), you won't get the balance scales. If you don't get the balance scales, instead of getting Excalibur, strongest sword in the game on floor 45, you get a crappy useless thing called the evil sword that does hardly any damage. On top of that, the game cruelly trolls you by poisoning you if you open the sword's chest, even if you do have the balance. The only way around that is to find an antidote which only appears if you defeat the coloured knights on that floor in a specific order, likewise not communicated to the player. Then on floor 46, you can only get the necklace which grants you immunity to dragon fire if you walk around the edge of the maze and touch all four corners, then...
Druaga sounds at least as brutal as Wizardry 4 is.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Sengoku Strider wrote: So saying "rpg means numbers going up" actually has some validity in the case of Japan. The pretending-to-be-an-elf thing just wasn't part of the form that initially made it across the Pacific.
This doesn't add up to me. The Japanese were well aware of the Lord of The Rings tropes in DnD before the popularization of official DnD post 1985. They had their own pen and paper scene largely buoyed by the light novel medium. Many local level games saw more official releases as the 80s moved on (such as Record of Lodoss War which got it's own anime).

The other key thing is Tower of Druaga, from early 1984.
I have always seen Druaga listed primarily as the inspiration for the Legend of Zelda, and to the Fantasy themed action adventure genre in general. It's a puzzle arcade game with zelda style items, but much simplified.

Also, I don't see Druaga as being particularly "numbers go up" driven. So if it's the great granddaddy, and your main point is that "numbers go up" is the primary mode of JRPG, doesn't make sense. If anything, it's proof that other random elements that loosely define the game as Fantasy in theme have done much to inform what is considered an RPG in Japan.
If you're looking for a Souls ancestor, cross this with Castlevania's animation priority gameplay and Ocarina of Time's 3D lock on, slash & roll combat and you're most of the way there.
Not knocking your creativity, but you're talking about a 20 year gap in the evolution of games in general. So many things had happened in the intervening time (including the rising popularity of actual pen and paper games, and the whole PS1 era of third person titles) that it seems like a bit of a leap to me.

There's 60 floors of this nonsense and player-trolling, and like the Souls games nobody was figuring this all out without a lot of info sharing.
That's pretty interesting. It would be fun to find out if they had this in mind when they created Souls. To me, it also brings Hexxen to mind. That game pretty well kicked my ass figuring out the order in which to do everything.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

Vanguard wrote:Druaga sounds at least as brutal as Wizardry 4 is.
Worse.

The way the game works is every floor there is a treasure and a key. You can see the key straight away, but the treasure is hidden. To reveal the treasure you have to do something. The key is required to progress to the next floor, but never the treasure. The treasures are only required to progress later floors, and mostly only the last floor i.e. you can advance to the top of the tower not having collected much treasure, but you will he zapped back once you reach Druaga.

To fuck with you some floors have no treasure, cursed treasure (if you failed to get an earlier one), or two treasures (this might be an addition in the different and friendlier PCE version, can't remember now) only one of which is important, but you don't know that so you might think you solved the floor to not realize that floor is the one preventing your progress.

It was explicitly designed so there's no rhyme or reason to making the treasures appear, and that the player base as a whole would have to figure it out through simple trial and error.

My understanding is players would come in with a cheat sheet of what they knew so far from their own experiences and also what their friends told them, get all the treasures they could, then tick the clock down every floor trying random things till they lost their credit.

And unlike Wizardry, there *is* a timer and on some floors it is brutal even if you know what you're meant to do.

The game still plays well enough with a guide, because that's how most people played it - with a guide but with maybe a few floors missing.

For a game inspired by Wizardry, it plays nothing at all like Wizardry whatsoever, which makes sense as the designer didn't want it to.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

vol.2 wrote:
The other key thing is Tower of Druaga, from early 1984.
I have always seen Druaga listed primarily as the inspiration for the Legend of Zelda, and to the Fantasy themed action adventure genre in general. It's a puzzle arcade game with zelda style items, but much simplified.

Also, I don't see Druaga as being particularly "numbers go up" driven. So if it's the great granddaddy, and your main point is that "numbers go up" is the primary mode of JRPG, doesn't make sense. If anything, it's proof that other random elements that loosely define the game as Fantasy in theme have done much to inform what is considered an RPG in Japan.
"numbers go up" refers to permanent power ups. (H)eart (P)ieces are thinly veiled (H)it (P)oints after all.

Druaga was, AFAIK, the first to make permanent power ups all about finding treasure, rather than killing enemies (although sometimes you found the treasure by killing all the enemies).

Zelda was actually a step back towards powering up through killing enemies.

You see, in Xanadu, you would gain both XP and gold by killing enemies. You would use XP to level up, and gold to raise individual stats. But getting enough XP didn't level you up automatically, like in say Hydlide, instead you would have to visit a temple back in "town".

Now in Zelda there's no split between XP and gold, it's all just rupees. But still you power up by killing enemies, collecting a resource, and going to a shop keeper.

But the shop keepers themselves are kind of like treasures in Druaga i.e. hidden. So Zelda is really a mix of Druaga and Xanadu.

Dark Souls has the XP and gold are one and the same thing from Zelda (in this case "Souls"), but the individual stat raising back at the temples (in this case Bonfires) of Xanadu (rather than hidden shop keepers).

Cult classic dungeon crawler Labyrinth of Touhou keeps the Xanadu system to a tee, but builds on top of it (with like level bonuses and skills and other things) and applies it to a party instead of an individual character. It cannot be overstated how influential Xanadu and the Dragon Slayer series as a whole were on JRPGs.
vol.2 wrote:
If you're looking for a Souls ancestor, cross this with Castlevania's animation priority gameplay and Ocarina of Time's 3D lock on, slash & roll combat and you're most of the way there.
Not knocking your creativity, but you're talking about a 20 year gap in the evolution of games in general. So many things had happened in the intervening time (including the rising popularity of actual pen and paper games, and the whole PS1 era of third person titles) that it seems like a bit of a leap to me.
Yup.

Miyazaki explicitly states Ocarina of Time was an influence. So that's 1998.

Quintet (original Ys team)'s PS1 Brightis is remarkably similar, that's 1999.

The last King's Field game was 2001.

Before working on Souls, Miyazaki worked on Armored Core, specifically Last Raven, that's 2005. And Armored Core does too have strong JRPG (specifically dungeon crawler) roots.

EDIT: Apparently there were some turn based King's Field games for the PSP in 2006. Cool.

Demon's Souls is in 2009. That's a four (EDIT: three? don't know how much those games mattered) year gap. Don't know of any pertinent influences in between.
Last edited by Licorice on Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:48 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Vanguard wrote: It's a lot stricter than "it's part of an arbitrary gestalt that may well include half of all games"
I guess you're using the quote marks to encapsulate the meaning of the phrase, because I didn't write that. Incidentally, it's also not what I meant.

The "gestalt" part of my definition refers to this:
any group of criteria that represents an established RPG sub-genre
The gestalt would have to be some overwhelming subset of elements that define that genre, and no, it wouldn't always have to include "numbers go up," but there is typically some stand-in for level progression nonetheless.
or "it's a game where you play a role, whatever that means."
I listed that as a possible criteria for being considered an RPG. I assumed that it was completely obvious that I'm not pushing that as an ultimate guide for whether or not a game is an RPG. It's simply one of the many criteria that commonly found in RPGs that help to define them as part of the wider genre. Also, I tied that to story-driven development and character development. Stats also play a role in character development (or at least they are intended to represent it in gameplay).

I'm not sure how much more specific I can get, but my main point here is simply that there is no single criteria for calling a game an "RPG." I think that's super reductionist.
Licorice wrote:"numbers go up" refers to permanent power ups. (H)eart (P)ieces are thinly veiled (H)it (P)oints after all.
If anything, I think you could make an argument that goes something like "an RPG would have to have this" rather than, "any game that has this is automatically an RPG." That's what Vanguard is arguing, and that's what I'm disagreeing with. There needs to be more than just that.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

vol.2 wrote: If anything, I think you could make an argument that goes something like "an RPG would have to have this" rather than, "any game that has this is automatically an RPG." That's what Vanguard is arguing, and that's what I'm disagreeing with. There needs to be more than just that.
The problem is if you add more than that you get absurd outcomes like "Dragon Quest is not an RPG" or "Wizardry is not an RPG".

The only other thing you can add that's been there from the beginning and remained throughout is topographic/spatial complexity i.e. the presence of "mazes" or "dungeons".
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sengoku Strider »

vol.2 wrote:This doesn't add up to me. The Japanese were well aware of the Lord of The Rings tropes in DnD before the popularization of official DnD post 1985.
I don't know how many knew those tropes as derived from LotR rather than just as Western fantasy, but sure they knew of them. It was in the general global media atmosphere throughout the 70s.

But again, in terms of actual tabletop gaming, as the books were still all in English it was a niche otaku thing before the late 80s (and even after), like how there were people in the US who knew about anime & manga in the 1960s, but those words would have meant nothing to 99.9% of the population.

If you've spent much time in Japan, it's not tough to figure out why. Aside from a general self-consciousness among people, houses tend to be very small, and basements aren't a thing let alone finished ones. Mom would be right on top of you telling you to do your homework so she could get the living room back to watch TV. There's also just a different culture around going into other people's homes, so not typically where everyone hangs out together after school. Tabletop role playing requires a certain degree of privacy and there just weren't that many places like that for most young people. That's why it took off more in terms of light novels, solo and networked video games, and card-based games that you can play outside, in a cafeteria or food court.
They had their own pen and paper scene largely buoyed by the light novel medium. Many local level games saw more official releases as the 80s moved on (such as Record of Lodoss War which got it's own anime).
Lodoss was based on a D&D campaign some guys were playing, serialized in a magazine from 1986-88. Illustrated first person adventure stories had been around since the 70s, but they didn't take the form you're thinking of until, well, Lodoss:
TaipeiTeenTimes wrote:Later on, light novels started to develop different styles. For example, “Record of Lodoss War” and “Slayers” published in 1988, were the origins of modern fantasy light novels. They also contributed to the development of fantasy games in Japan such as the Final Fantasy series. During this period, most light novels focused on fantasy themes, which fostered the growth of this kind of literature.
https://taipeiteentribune.com/light-novels-history/

The term 'light novel' itself was coined in 1990.
I have always seen Druaga listed primarily as the inspiration for the Legend of Zelda, and to the Fantasy themed action adventure genre in general. It's a puzzle arcade game with zelda style items, but much simplified.

Also, I don't see Druaga as being particularly "numbers go up" driven.
No, it's not really numbers-driven. I introduced Druaga because it laid down a successful template for a top-down sword & sorcery game with a single squat protagonist navigating a world on an invisible grid with smooth motion. That arcadey framework was the main and direct influence on Hydlide, in its creator Naito Tokohiro's own words. From there you don't have to look very far to see the influence Hydlide had on Dragon Quest:

Image

Image

DQ practically xeroxed Hydlide's main character & overworld design.

Druaga's direct influence is plainly felt in various places in DQ as well, those brick floor titles look to have been lifted right out of it:

Image

Image

The first Dragon Quest was a game I really enjoyed, but it might well have languished in obscurity with the rest of its contemporaries had it not been for the amazing spritework based on Toriyama Akira's designs. At the time there just wasn't anything that had looked like that - for context, it launched around the same time as Ghosts n' Goblins and Legend of Kage on the Famicom.
If you're looking for a Souls ancestor, cross this with Castlevania's animation priority gameplay and Ocarina of Time's 3D lock on, slash & roll combat and you're most of the way there.
Not knocking your creativity, but you're talking about a 20 year gap in the evolution of games in general. So many things had happened in the intervening time (including the rising popularity of actual pen and paper games, and the whole PS1 era of third person titles) that it seems like a bit of a leap to me.
I wouldn't say so. The Castlevania/Dark Souls comparison has been made by many, many people before me. Castlevania's gameplay revolves around that same framework of having to really commit to a move - based on very deliberately timed animations - before you make it or be punished, generally called animation priority gameplay. No mid-jump direction reversals or spamming the attack button here. Locking on to enemies and rolling around was the solution Ocarina of Time came up with for 3D combat, and as I'm sure you're aware it was hugely influential.

And Druaga, again, it's just one of those things like Xevious that didn't register outside Japan but has its dna in practically everything in its ouevre that came after it through some lineage or another. But yes, of course, there were plenty of other influences that went into Miyazaki's games, and he's listed several himself.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

Squire Grooktook wrote:
Mischief Maker wrote:Dark Souls is a clone of the Spanish-developed "Severance: Blade of Darkness."
No offense MM, but you really need to spend some time sitting down with these games. A lot of quotes from the series I remember from you really gives me a "sat down with it for five minutes to an hour , didn't take a shine to it, and walked away before discovering how it actually works/plays".
I suppose I was a little salty when writing that reply after reading so many people turning their noses up at- nay, saying they were disgusted by the masterpiece Planescape: Torment and to a lesser extent Fallout 1. These are cream of the crop for CRPG storytelling.

Planescape and Fallout are masterclasses in Role-Playing Games. As in allowing the player to dream up whatever role they wish to inhabit, like a post-apocalyptic lawyer, and the game's quest design and breadth of writing can accomodate your character, like a good tabletop DM. Hell, if you create a character who dumps almost everything into the "garbage" charisma stat, not only do you always have a path to follow, you can foil the big-bad's evil plan by talking them out of it!

And what are people saying makes these bad games? Things like, "dude, if you read a speedrun guide you can totally finish the game in 15 minutes. Game Mastered." Yeah, you know what else? You can credit-feed shmups and "master" those games in about a half hour. Shmups are soooooo casual!
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Licorice »

Mischief Maker wrote: And what are people saying makes these bad games? Things like, "dude, if you read a speedrun guide you can totally finish the game in 15 minutes. Game Mastered." Yeah, you know what else? You can credit-feed shmups and "master" those games in about a half hour. Shmups are soooooo casual!
Prfft. Not the same at all.

Same would be reading a guide on say DDPDOJ and saying "yeah I got this" and having it mastered and 2-ALL 1CC'ing it every time.

You simply can't, cause the game doesn't magically disappear when you obtain knowledge, unlike crummy WRPGs which fail to be games at all.

Even Druaga gets this right. Try beating Druaga with a guide, it's still a challenge.
The Castlevania/Dark Souls comparison has been made by many, many people before me. Castlevania's gameplay revolves around that same framework of having to really commit to a move
I'm not an expert on Castlevania, I put a bit of time into the Famicom game, and cleared SotN, but I will note that that Castlevania's MSX outing belongs to Konami's tit for tat competition with Falcom (think Maze of Galious vs Drasle Family), and is part of the same tradition or school of JRPG design as Dark Souls.

BTW missing in your analysis of the early history is Dragon Slayer! Specifically Xanadu. Hugely influential on JRPGs as a whole.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Sengoku Strider wrote: If you've spent much time in Japan, it's not tough to figure out why.
Sure, yeah, lived there for years. It would be the college age crowd who flock to this kind of thing. The close-knit family vibe is missed when the kids go away to college, and they tend to form tight families of friends. IAC, tabletop gaming certainly exists over there, even it never saw the level of popularity as it did in the West, and knowledge of LOTR style elves and dwarves and wizards was certainly not some kind of unknown thing over there, even before DnD came over.

The point of that comment I made was that they knew those RPG tropes well enough to factor the Fantasy theme into what an RPG is. My main, overall point is that "Numbers Go Up," isn't an adequate description for an RPG.
That's why it took off more in terms of light novels, solo and networked video games, and card-based games that you can play outside, in a cafeteria or food court.
No doubt. This whole argument is about whether or not "Numbers Go Up" can be used as the only the criteria to describe a game as an RPG. Whether or not they were super-duper into TT gaming isn't the point. If anything, the lack of TT gaming led the RPG to take on a less numbers driven form than it did in the US (in the 90s).
Lodoss was based on a D&D campaign some guys were playing, serialized in a magazine from 1986-88.
Trust, me, I know all about ROLW. I was one of those Otaku in the US going to anime shows in the late 80s. I fucking loved ROLW, and I still do.
The term 'light novel' itself was coined in 1990.
Kay. They existed before that. I suppose it's ret-conning, but okay.
No, it's not really numbers-driven. I introduced Druaga because it laid down a successful template for a top-down sword & sorcery game with a single squat protagonist navigating a world on an invisible grid with smooth motion. That arcadey framework was the main and direct influence on Hydlide, in its creator Naito Tokohiro's own words. From there you don't have to look very far to see the influence Hydlide had on Dragon Quest:
Well, my whole point was that other things besides "Numbers Go Up" are valid to include in a description of a game to qualify it as being an RPG, and one of my main suggestions was that the Japanese RPG sub-genres essentially necessitate the expansion of that definition because some many of them are built up around mechanics that are different from CRPGs. So this more or less I am completely agreeing with. I can see Hydlide as a missing link with Zelda though, and also Deadly Towers.


I wouldn't say so.
I don't disagree totally, but I think you overstate your case.

My point was that there are tons of games to pick and choose these mechanics from. You've left a 25 window to select game influences from, and you are talking about big, important mechanics that had already been well implemented in lots of other games before DS came out. There isn't anything in there that is unique to Dark Souls (or to any of those other games).

However, I think one could say that those games you chose are representative of the mechanics that ended up defining Dark Souls in an important way.

And the Druaga thing though, that's got more meat to it. It's not a common game mechanic.
But yes, of course, there were plenty of other influences that went into Miyazaki's games, and he's listed several himself.
Yeah, pretty much.

Also, one last thing. The map pictures you posted of Hydlide. Let's not forget that Ultima exists here. I see what you're trying to do with showing some progression, but both of those games could just have easily been looking at Ultima and making tweaks.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

Mischief Maker wrote:I suppose I was a little salty when writing that reply after reading so many people turning their noses up at- nay, saying they were disgusted by the masterpiece Planescape: Torment and to a lesser extent Fallout 1. These are cream of the crop for CRPG storytelling.

Planescape and Fallout are masterclasses in Role-Playing Games. As in allowing the player to dream up whatever role they wish to inhabit, like a post-apocalyptic lawyer, and the game's quest design and breadth of writing can accomodate your character, like a good tabletop DM. Hell, if you create a character who dumps almost everything into the "garbage" charisma stat, not only do you always have a path to follow, you can foil the big-bad's evil plan by talking them out of it!
Fallout's combat is garbage and there's a lot of it if you're not doing a cheesed speedrun playthrough. It's very buggy and tons of quests fall apart for little to no reason. If Gizmo gets mad when you're talking to him for Killian, the quest breaks. If you procure temporary water for your vault after securing unlimited water, the unlimited water is lost and the time limit is reinstated. It's impossible to not get the bad ending for the Followers of the Apocalypse because their quest straight up doesn't work. It's definitely above average in terms of choices and consequences and roleplaying options, but even in that regard it's overrated. Dark Souls is about as strong in choices and consequences in addition to being a vastly better game overall.

I understand why people still like and talk about Fallout but you shouldn't overlook its serious flaws.
Licorice wrote:The problem is if you add more than that you get absurd outcomes like "Dragon Quest is not an RPG" or "Wizardry is not an RPG".
Either that or you go in the opposite direction and conclude that Doom and Bubble Bobble are RPGs.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Are we really discussing what an RPG is now?

I kinda want to address some of the things said about DQ1, but I don't think I want to jump into this parade.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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Vanguard wrote:Either that or you go in the opposite direction and conclude that Doom and Bubble Bobble are RPGs.
lf only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting.
- E7 Magazine's review of Doom, 1994

:lol:
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