posted
Yep, looks good doesn't it? We were talking a little about this game in the Roger Ebert thread.
I'm really excited for it. When I heard there was going to be a Studio Ghibli / Level 5 game, I was stoked until I heard it was going to be on the DS. Then when they announced it for the PS3 I almost jumped out of my chair.
It is looking beautiful so far, and it won't even be out until next year. I'm hoping they get Joe Hisaishi to do the music.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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posted
It looks like another turned-based CRPG. The art is nice, but I'm not interested in that kind of game.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Level 5 generally sucks though. They didn't really design DQ8, either(which is a good, not great game). They only coded it. Most of there other games are mediocre but I'll play this.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
Ok hold on now. JRPG's are not crap. The direction some of them have been going lately hasn't helped, but there are a LOT of JRPG's that have been absolutely wonderful.
Vaklyria Chronicles on the PS3 is amazing. So is Demon's Souls. Star Ocean the Last Hope was also enjoyable.
The Xenosaga series on the Playstation 2 is great storytelling. I've never seen such an immersive story in a video game.
The Shin Megami Tensei series is great.
And come on. Ninokuni is Studio Ghibli. What have they ever done that has not been pure artistic gold? They have had some films that are better than others, but every one of them has had artistic appeal as well as great writing.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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posted
No but in all seriousness, there are plenty of subpar JRPGs--there are. But there are still plenty of RPGs that demand efficient and cereberal play. Balancing your party, getting the upgrade you need more than others, x' and o's, which enemy should you target first, efficient play lets you stay in the field longer to grind and find items, etc. And it isnt hard to pick them out--get a circle of friends who you trust and go off their recommendations. Not hard.
This game is probably going to suck though. But I'll still play it for whimsiness.
The xenosaga story is engaging but the only one I'd call good (in terms of the game part) is 3. Not really innovative, but its precise. I loved the gauntlet of bosses at the very end.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
I rarely have to do it. I dont suck. But the people who think that they're isnt any thought in grinding are whack.
Also, never finish a battle when someone in you r party is incapacitated. They dont get exp, and NO ONE realizes it. Also, if your about to fight a boss and someone like 5 exp away from leveling up, level him up.
Save any stat booster items until you know you can use them in a productive way.
Come back on friday dont be late pwnt.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
No, no, I'm not saying that having to grind means you suck. I'm saying that grinding itself is inherently anti-fun and sucks, and systems that require grinding are worse than systems which do not.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Uh, that's what I was saying. If you dont suck, you have nothing to worry about pwnt.
Also, I dont think I've ever grinded in non pokemon/mmo, because even if I was leveling up, it was during all the exploration I did. It wasnt like damn I have to grind, but I was still leveling up. And I always kept in mind what I would probably need later on.
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posted
I think what Tom is saying is that just progressing through the story requires grinding through enemies.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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But commonly not before you investigated everything available, or even on the path there. It's not hard enough to play well enough so you dont have to grind very often.
Fire Emblem doesnt even let you grind.
Grinding typically means leveling up after you realize your stuck on an enemy with no chance of success, so you have to level up. (I think this is what he means anyway) But skill plays a huge effect on whether you have to grind or not.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
I'm saying that the entire mechanism of having to fight repetitive enemies and search every corner of the map for things to increase your power in order to improve your character's abilities enough to overcome the next challenge is, as mechanics go, a terrible mechanic. Games that rely on this mechanic overmuch generally suck, which is why JRPGs in particular -- since this is what JRPG gameplay is -- suck.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Its a specific mechanic that is one of the primary reasons for its popularity in the first place, Dungeons and Dragons is virtually no different, its all just linear encounters after encounter, heck even first person shooters are arguably the same if you get down to it, traversing the map killing innumerable baddies to get more powerful/skilled is the core mechanic for nearly every game imaginable except visual novels.
Some games do this better then others, Earthbound autowon fights that it calculated you could win in the first round, some games have a better balanced progression that doesn't require grind, the only times I ever grind is when I do it voluntarily so I can more easily breeze past the bosses or because I RUSHED ahead to far and became outclassed by said bosses ala FF7.
quote:Yeah, JRPGs are quite possibly the lowest form of schlock.
This statement quite frankly (JBlade Edit: Sorry Blayne don't attack people) is no better then Ebert's generalized dismissal of an entire medium.
Your allowed to not like it but its not objectively crap just because you say so.
Battling monsters to gain experiance levels and incrementally improving items is as good a metric as any other to determining character progression as any other, there's a reason why JRPGs are their own category so you if you don't like games where 50% of gameplay is made up of instanced turn based combat can avoid it and go somewhere else and play NHL 2011 or whatever the latest sports game is.
Turn based combat is what we like about the genre, without it they wouldn't be JRPGs.
quote:Dungeons and Dragons is virtually no different, its all just linear encounters after encounter, heck even first person shooters are arguably the same if you get down to it, traversing the map killing innumerable baddies to get more powerful/skilled is the core mechanic...
Do you not perceive a distinction between pen-and-paper D&D, JRPGs, and FPS games?
quote:Turn based combat is what we like about the genre...
Oh, I'm all about turn-based tactical combat. That's not the problem. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Plenty of games are fairly linear though--some games dont have exploration at all--N1, Fire Emblem, Valkyria Chronicles, pretty much every Srpg. And there's a science to how you improve the abilities, and it's ****ing awesome. It's why RPGs are the most replayable genre; you can solve a puzzle in zelda in more than one way, y'know--you cant solve it in a better way, either. But you can replay an RPG with a completely different character set if you want to.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I'm saying that the entire mechanism of having to fight repetitive enemies and search every corner of the map for things to increase your power in order to improve your character's abilities enough to overcome the next challenge is, as mechanics go, a terrible mechanic. Games that rely on this mechanic overmuch generally suck, which is why JRPGs in particular -- since this is what JRPG gameplay is -- suck.
Your reasons for disliking JRPGs are just you hating general grindy RPG mechanics.
My reasons are that the mass of JRPG's are mostly very derivative with excruciatingly few exceptions: the average JRPG involves very VERY little decision-making; you have a set plot, you follow it without being able to affect it in any significant way, watching the cutscenes for the story. Character customization is slim to none.
So since you hate grind in RPG's in general, they provide the best fodder for you disliking their experience. The setpieces and route character development and cutscenes have gaps between them getting stuffed with crap to extend the life of the game since 60 hours is now an industry benchmark for JRPGs.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote: Your reasons for disliking JRPGs are just you hating general grindy RPG mechanics.
My reasons are that the mass of JRPG's are mostly very derivative with excruciatingly few exceptions...
Hey, I also hate JRPGs for that reason. I wasn't really restricting myself to one specific form of hatred. In fact, given that I don't hate all CRPGs, I think it's obvious that there are multiple factors that go into making JRPGs the suckiest of all genres. Except driving games, which suck worse.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Torchlight is, I think, a very classic example of why grind is a bad mechanic: it's entirely about the grind. Unless you completely crank up the difficulty levels -- to levels you can't access until you've already played through the game multiple times -- the entire game is simply a matter of doing things over and over again to collect stuff. Whether you're collecting stats or collecting fish doesn't matter: at the end of the day, you're just clicking on something four or five times to see if you collected something else. And because the enemies actually scale with your abilities, even your new abilities are really just something to collect rather than a meaningful difference to your play style.
If you could make a $1 microtransaction in Torchlight to buy a skill point, it would be Farmville. But because it's colorful and things are moving around and they pretend to tack on a "story," we perceive it as a game instead of what it actually is: a very slowly incrementing integer.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Just so were clear, I agree with you. And I really hate the combat in those Diabloesque games.
I like Borderlands though.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Dungeons and Dragons is virtually no different, its all just linear encounters after encounter, heck even first person shooters are arguably the same if you get down to it, traversing the map killing innumerable baddies to get more powerful/skilled is the core mechanic...
Do you not perceive a distinction between pen-and-paper D&D, JRPGs, and FPS games?
quote:Turn based combat is what we like about the genre...
Oh, I'm all about turn-based tactical combat. That's not the problem.
The mechanic you describe as poor game design is present as a crucial foundation within CRPGs, D&D, FPS and every other genre imaginable except maybe scrabble bookworm adventures.
-> Explore -> Kill Stuff -> Get stuff to Kill More Stuff Repeat.
ALL GAMES EVER are this if you row reduce them.
The best example is the conversion of Pen&Paper D&D to Neverwinter Nights, in Neverwinter Nights they have the same experiance brackets 1000,3000,6000,etc but if they had the encounters give the same experiance as in the tabletop game your party would be level 20 1/3 through the game.
If they didn't have this mechanic you would have a broken unbalanced game, its an absolute requirement in order to have a balanced level progression that doesn't exshuast itself before you leave the first disk.
Besides its these battles that ADD to the fun in the newer games because of the more freerform battles with their graphics makes for a pleasant experience, we like to constantly beat up monsters over and over especially when we can do it different ways each time, gamers are inherently gamists at heart and we NEED the grinding mechanic in order to powergame our characters as much as the engine allows.
A mechanic cannot by default be inherently bad if it is inherently the crux of what JRPG fans find attractive with the genre.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Torchlight is, I think, a very classic example of why grind is a bad mechanic: it's entirely about the grind. Unless you completely crank up the difficulty levels -- to levels you can't access until you've already played through the game multiple times -- the entire game is simply a matter of doing things over and over again to collect stuff. Whether you're collecting stats or collecting fish doesn't matter: at the end of the day, you're just clicking on something four or five times to see if you collected something else. And because the enemies actually scale with your abilities, even your new abilities are really just something to collect rather than a meaningful difference to your play style.
If you could make a $1 microtransaction in Torchlight to buy a skill point, it would be Farmville. But because it's colorful and things are moving around and they pretend to tack on a "story," we perceive it as a game instead of what it actually is: a very slowly incrementing integer.
Except that grind is at least in Diablo II completely optional, you can play through the whole game unoptimized on normal mode and win with subpar equipment.
Playing the game over and over is an OPTIONAL gameplay method so that people who WANT to optimize their characters can do so and isn't required.
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posted
I like how some RPGs have ways to add to the total exp by doing better in battles, like time bonuses in Fire Emblem and beating enemies while stunned in Xenosaga 3.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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quote:ALL GAMES EVER are this if you row reduce them.
I will write my reply in the style of Roast Beef:
You are so wrong right now oh man you don't even know you are just about being Roger Ebert.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:ALL GAMES EVER are this if you row reduce them.
I will write my reply in the style of Roast Beef:
You are so wrong right now oh man you don't even know you are just about being Roger Ebert.
I am pointing out that your position is disengenius, that the majority of games share key mechanics that you complain about and that they have been around for a long time, have been tried and tested and have remained a staple for years, it exists because it IS fun.
There are maybe some games where due to a botched implementation may be unfun but that is the fault of the developers of that game and not the core mechanic that while maybe not 'perfect' serves the core aspect of gaming for entire genres.
As such saying that JRPG's are "shlock" because of this is frankly, wrong. Just wrong.
You are incapable of refuting this except through sneering and casual dismissal.
The only valid argument you can make is that to you, you find grinding unfun. That the mechanic makes JRPG's "objectively" unfun and that JRPG fans are just fooling themselves which is the ultimate conclusion of your argument is for lack of a proper expletive garbage.
I find JRPG's fun and love the Final Fantasy series and had originally gotten a PS3 just in anticipation for FF13 before it was stolen by the local walking ghetto slum stereotype.
By virtue of being of at least one example of MANY people who find it fun your argument is invalidated.
To paraphrase from the "So Bad Its Horrible" page, "For something to qualify as So Bad its Horrible it has to even fail to appeal to the niche it is targeted at."
The only thing compelling about your argument is in how it illuminates how far up your behind your head is.
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quote:that the majority of games share key mechanics that you complain about
Firstly, I reject the assertion that "all games" involve killing things to up your stats so that you can kill things with even better stats with roughly the same difficulty that you killed the first things.
quote:...and that they have been around for a long time, have been tried and tested and have remained a staple for years, it exists because it IS fun.
And, moreover, I reject the assertion that because something is popular, it must be fun. As evidence I submit nicotene addiction.
quote:The only valid argument you can make is that to you, you find grinding unfun.
Not even to me. Grinding is fundamentally unfun. It is the opposite of fun. Gamers have, however, been trained to respond like mice to cheese when that cheese is dangled just on the other side of a door: we go through the door and get the cheese after a cutscene. Assuming we've already backtracked to get the key.
quote:To paraphrase from the "So Bad Its Horrible" page, "For something to qualify as So Bad its Horrible it has to even fail to appeal to the niche it is targeted at."
You realize that TV Tropes is not an authoritative source on -- just as an example -- what the word "bad" means, or what it would take for something to be bad. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
For the most part, I can categorize RPG's into two different types.
USRPG: Choose your own adventure books
JRPG: Novels
Granted there are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part that is how it is.
The Mass Effect Series, The Fallout Series, The Elder Scrolls Series, as well as newer RPG's such as Alpha Protocol all present you with choices and consequences which can shape the direction of the game.
I'm fine with this type of storytelling, as it makes it my own. I'm also ok with traditional RPG's, because it has a story to tell me.
Xenosaga had a story that I still think about to this day. Gameplay aside, the story was well thought out and presented. There was some controversial parts to the story pertaining to science and religion, but it added to the story without seeming preachy. One part where a being that is obviously Jesus is shown with a character (who is thousands of years old) looking on and listening struck me. It is alluded to that this character liked the teachings of Jesus and that he was actually the one that performed the miracles such as turning water into wine.
Both types of RPG's have a place, and I enjoy both types in different ways.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: Uh, that's what I was saying. If you dont suck, you have nothing to worry about pwnt.
Every time you say "pwnt", your chances of ever finding someone in this world who will love you as much as one person can love another decrease slightly.
posted
That's supposed to be tounge in cheek, man. Also, thats me channeling a friend of mine who says pwnt whenever hes posting about basketball. And/Or, I just feel like being the opposite of Tom when I argue with him.
Just so you know, JRPGs != traditional RPGs. (It also breaks my heart when someone says, "Gameplay aside, here's how I felt about this game..." but I'll let that pass, because honestly I've done it myself. There are a number of games I've enjoyed almost purely for the story -- especially in the adventure game genre -- although I have to admit that the numbers have thinned in the era of the online walkthrough.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: That's supposed to be tounge in cheek, man. Also, thats me channeling a friend of mine who says pwnt whenever hes posting about basketball. And/Or, I just feel like being the opposite of Tom when I argue with him.
pwnt
I'm afraid this is one of those words that even when used tongue-in-cheek you come off looking like someone who will spend the rest of their life alone.
Just looking out for you.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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quote:Uh, that's what I was saying. If you dont suck, you have nothing to worry about pwnt.
I say this as a WoW player who ground his way up to 60 fairly early in the game, on a PvP server no less as Horde when we were usually outnumbered at least 3-1: not sucking makes grinding easier, it doesn't make it any less tedious or annoying a gameplay mechanism.
I remember thinking how strange it was, back when I played, that people would defend grinding as though it was some measure of virtue and skill. People putting up good complaints about grinding were dissed because they 'sucked', their thoughts rejected. I suppose that's part and parcel of the sort of training Tom was talking about.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
If they're saying that grinding = skill, then yeay thats retarded. Even though I'll shitalk like that once in awhile, since I'm a patient person and like to fight.
But there is some factor of skill and experience that prevents having to grind. Ofcourse there are sone games where you pretty much have to grind (via sidemissions), but I always wanted to explore most of those worlds anyways. And hey, like what you like, but dont think your above me fighting back if your like "RPGS are scourge of the world"
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
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posted
Well, no, in my experience a game set up with substantial grinding does not in fact require much skill and experience. It requires knowledge and patience, which isn't the same thing. Knowledge to go to the right place at the right time and kill/defeat things, patience to do it enough to get through.
I don't know what on Earth I said or suggested could possibly be construed as 'RPGs are the scourge of the world'.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
talking to tom and samp--referring to beginning of thread--which is where/why the "suck" comment came about. Which is what you kind of called me out on.
I've pretty much already made every point I'm nerdy enough to address.
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