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Post by Warlock on May 23, 2013 19:05:54 GMT -5
So, to generate some discussion on this board: what are the tropes/gameplay aspects you like least about RPGs? What do you find to be the biggest RPG headaches?
I've never had much patience for hunting for rare drops, and I find I have less and less the older I get. It just seems like such an easy way for developers to add extra time-to-completion for a game without needing any new content- "Hey, let's make the player collect 20 doodads that rare Foozles drop in 1/8 of battles!"
I've always found teleporter mazes to be another anti-favorite- it's basically a "puzzle" that's only solvable by brute force.
- HC
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Post by Kalisiin Kumaki on May 23, 2013 20:15:17 GMT -5
For me, an anti-favorite is any "gone-forever" item - especially if the item is one you need to complete the game, making it a "game-killer"
The one shard in DW7 comes to mind...if you flood the lake before getting that shard, you can't ever get it again, and that makes it a "game-killer"
Any "gone-forever" item is lousy, because if you don't get it before a certain event, then you never can get it.
I don't mind teleporter mazes, particularly, as long as they are not insanely complicated so that the average person could not make it thru without a walkthru guide.
I prefer not to use walkthru's - only using them when I'm totally stuck...and I hate to be stuck on something like that. Usually, walkthrus are used by me when I can't figure out what town to go to next or some such...because the NPC's haven't been very helpful.
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Post by Warlock on May 24, 2013 7:01:23 GMT -5
Hope you've never played any of the old point-and-click adventure games; many of them were quite infamous for this... The one item at the beginning that you needed for a specific puzzle, but you could not take (and then lose access to) or use in the solution to another puzzle instead. Makes me think of the black torch at the beginning of Shadowgate...
The DQ7 one I'm tempted to chalk up to a bug, albeit a pretty serious one. :/
- HC
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Post by Kalisiin Kumaki on May 24, 2013 14:15:12 GMT -5
Oh, hell yeah, I remember that thing from Shadowgate, LOL!! Took me almost six months to figure that one out...and it was that torch that did me in...I finally figured out I had to get that thing. The beautiful thing about Shadowgate, though...was that you could ALWAYS backtrack...there was never a truly "gone-forever" as there is in DW7. You could even backtrack back thru the fire room, because it stayed safe to pass after you threw the ice orb in there. You literally could walk back all the way to the beginning and grab that sucker.
So, while the Shadowgate thing is certainly annoying...it is not in the same class, because it isn't TRULY a gone-forever. Of course, if you can hack your savestate on DW7, neither is that shard, LOL.
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Post by Warlock on May 24, 2013 20:18:55 GMT -5
If memory serves, it was a gone-forever; that one particular torch was needed to solve a puzzle later on in the game, but you could light it as if it were a normal torch at any time... And once it burned out, it was gone forever. If you hadn't solved the puzzle you needed it for yet? Too bad.
- HC
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Post by Kalisiin Kumaki on May 27, 2013 14:13:38 GMT -5
I don't seem to remember that aspect of Shadowgate, but it has been a long time. A pain-in-the-ass like that I'd think I would remember, so it is entirely possible that I never had an issue with running out of torches before solving that puzzle.
But if what you are saying is true...that this COULD happen to you...then yes, it qualifies as a potential gone-forever game killer.
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Post by Vireo Gilvus on May 27, 2013 15:55:02 GMT -5
Some RPGs have too many puzzles (like Wild Arms or the Lufia series), which can be a turnoff and a disrupter of the game flow. I'm sorry, but I play RPGs because I'm in the mood for dialogue, exploration, and battle scenes with lots of numbers. If I want puzzles, I'll play a puzzle game.
RPGs with too many minigames, particularly ones that require precision or reflex action, are even worse. The top offender in this department: Mario & Luigi. Yes, I'm aware that its spiritual prequel (Super Mario RPG) suffered from Minigame Surplus Disorder as well, but there was an essential difference. In SMRPG, failing a minigame meant your reward wouldn't be as good, but you still got to advance the story. M&L, on the other hand, required you to pass the minigames in order to proceed.
Then there are the RPGs which incorporate precision and reflex action into the regular battle system. Examples of this include Mario & Luigi (again) and Shadow Hearts. In the latter, every action you take in battle (even using items) triggers a "wheel of fortune" which you must stop in a certain place in order for your action to work. Because of this, you end up missing quite a lot, especially during extra stressful situations such as boss battles. Your enemies aren't subjected to the same rules, so the odds are heavily in their favor. To add insult to injury, the game keeps track of how many times you miss.
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Post by Kalisiin Kumaki on May 27, 2013 21:39:57 GMT -5
Then there are the RPGs which incorporate precision and reflex action into the regular battle system. Examples of this include Mario & Luigi (again) and Shadow Hearts. In the latter, every action you take in battle (even using items) triggers a "wheel of fortune" which you must stop in a certain place in order for your action to work. Because of this, you end up missing quite a lot, especially during extra stressful situations such as boss battles. Your enemies aren't subjected to the same rules, so the odds are heavily in their favor. To add insult to injury, the game keeps track of how many times you miss. This sounds a lot like the battle system in FF2 and forward...what was that APB battle system or something? The system I hate?? |
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Post by Vireo Gilvus on May 28, 2013 0:16:12 GMT -5
Active Time Battle (ATB) was used in all the main-series FF games introduced on Super Nintendo and PlayStation, as well as Chrono Trigger.
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Post by Warlock on May 28, 2013 15:05:12 GMT -5
You didn't like the Lufia and WA puzzles? That's a shame; I rather liked them... I thought they gave both games a bit of flavor that they otherwise wouldn't have had. Granted, a puzzle-less Lufia 2 may have been able to get by on its systems and a puzzle-less Wild ARMs may have been able to get by on its writing, but I think both games would have been much more bland and generally worse off for it.
I haven't played Mario and Luigi in years, but I did play through it when it first came out and remember liking it quite a bit. My memory's a bit hazy, but as I recall the combat was a lot more explicitly action-y; when enemies were attacking you, Mario and Luigi could jump at any time... Timing it correctly let you avoid attacks entirely or get a counterattack in for some extra damage (EG by landing on enemies charging at you). I think maybe there were a couple other actions you got access to eventually as well- swinging a hammer to knock away projectiles and such- but I may be wrong on that one. I do recall that some of the 'dodging' sequences and timing-based puzzle bits could be pretty tricky- the last battle in particular was pretty brutal.
The ATB, on the other hand, is essentially a 'traditional' menu-driven system on a timer. Although some of the ATB-based games have timing/reflex-based bits, it's generally a secondary thing associated with a couple characters or abilities rather than a central feature of the system the way dodging is in M&L.
- HC
Eta: note also that 'ATB' is not a generic term; it refers pretty specifically to the system used in the SNES/PSX-era Final Fantasy games and Chrono Trigger.
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