What is the superior style of gameplay in RPGs?

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Originally Posted by red_war_machine

Skies' major problem is that the battles are so SLOW.

Take Breath of Fire III, for instance. It's like Skies of Arcadia's, but stuff happens quickly. In a fast battle, you can finish it in one turn - less than fifteen seconds, in most cases. Skies of Arcadia... you have to wait for ten minutes for everything to appear, then you run and it doens't let you, and all the enemies attack and miss and then you try and run again and it doesn't let you, and all the enemies attack except two who run away, then you try and run and it doesn't let you, then the rest of the enemies run. Added to this, each turn takes about thirty seconds to complete. It gets hideously boring.

Turn-based battling is great, but it needs to be QUICK or else it's just gonna get boring. Skies is a perfect example of how NOT to attempt to do turn-based battling. Cutting out the battle animations altogether would make it a million times better.

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Should've used Suikoden II's battles instead of BoFIII's (and maybe Suikoden I's too, I can't remember that game very well). Super-fast, looked pretty, reasonably spaced apart in their frequency, etc. Ah, yes, Suikoden II... ::gazes wistfully into the afternoon sun, blinding himself::

But Skies of Arcadia really wasn't as bad as you make it out up there. Aika had her fire magic that could take out most groups of weaker enemies (90% of battles) on her first turn.

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Originally Posted by Compass

Should've used Suikoden II's battles instead of BoFIII's (and maybe Suikoden I's too, I can't remember that game very well). Super-fast, looked pretty, reasonably spaced apart in their frequency, etc. Ah, yes, Suikoden II... ::gazes wistfully into the afternoon sun, blinding himself::

But Skies of Arcadia really wasn't as bad as you make it out up there. Aika had her fire magic that could take out most groups of weaker enemies (90% of battles) on her first turn.

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Loopers.

I haven't played any of the Suikoden games. I can't afford the extortionate prices they go for here.

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Originally Posted by red_war_machine

Loopers.

I haven't played any of the Suikoden games. I can't afford the extortionate prices they go for here.

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Loopers weren't affected by magic? I forgot about that. So yeah, the Arcadia battles were a bit of a bitch. Didn't they fix things for the GC release though?

And you should've bought the Suikoden games when they were released like a good boy. ;) Actually I didn't buy Suikoden II until last March and I got it for like $45 mint on ebay so that's not absurdly high.

Still, even if the battles are quick and you get intterupted while trying to get a missed treasure in a big dungeoun, then it's a pain in the ass to have to sit through so much interruption when you are just trying to move around quickly.

Turn based stuff is fine when it is optional (or if it is aimed for a strategy rpg audience) for strategic advantages (say like pressing spacebar to plan your party's attacks and stuff that would normally take too long in realtime because of the number of things to manage at once) but it's when you have to get intterupted that bothers me more.

Random battles = annoying = a lazy form of world representation. It sticks out like a sore thumb: You can have a realistic looking world with CG backdroups but then it looks so barren and empty when there aren't things you can see moving on the map. Seeing enemies in a 3d world though might encourage the other classes like thief to use thier stealth to avoid detection and offer a new way of playing the less-combative classes where things like finding traps, travelling lightly, detecting enemies etc has a strategic advantage in the real world; and the player feels they are totally thinking on a new level when they discover new ways of solving problems. (instead of fighting your way through every single situation - this just makes the game a level-up fest and spoils the personality of each character. I'm not talking about soap opera drama, since you can have that too in a western rpg, it just hasn't been done to the same level yet by american companies since nobody hires novel writers to bring enough character and story and world depth - I'm reffering moreso to the gameplay engine which is too restrictive, a little too dumbed-down, and makes the player feel uninvolved and a little bit insulted.)

Once you play heaps of linear rpgs and get sick of wasting time with random battles, it becomes more a case of "I'm only playing this to be rewarded with the progress of more story" than "Gee I'm so absorbed by the level of control and feeling of involvment".

And anyway the story HAS to be good in order for someone to endure that level of commitment (100 hours) and this is what the real problem is. It's not the length of the game but whether the time you spend to play through it is really worth it - have our expectations changed since then so much that the story being good, isn't enough to soley justify playing for so long?

The main gripe the guy from GS article was having was that the old style of rpg feels like 'filler' because often it serves to lengthen the game through repetition more than because it is packed full of fun stuff to do and is highly replayable. The world isn't vast and full of detail, the pace is just slow and boring; which is turning people away. Not much has changed from the 8-bit days in the style of representation and the effect it has had on how things are done, so as a result people are looking for more in a game these days.

If say, as an example, 20 hours of the 40 hours of the rpg was spent through being intterupted through numerous forced battles, it deadens your senses (sometimes after taking breaks you forget the story because of the levelling up and subgames taking up so much time) and dulls your own imagination. (you're not thinking up your own original stuff, since so much is preset by the designers at a microcopic level with no thought to the player's ideal PC whom they can flesh out. There are some characters in linear rpgs that just seem unnecesary and need fleshing out. Eg vincent in ff7 seems out of place and chucked in with barely any backstory or motivation. What's the point of including characters in a party you don't care for or who have been hard-scripted to have little involvement?)

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Originally Posted by red_war_machine

Skies' major problem is that the battles are so SLOW.

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Skies has the quickest battle system ever. Just Lamba Burst until you're done. I finished most battles in less than a minute. Not fun, but not slow. Loading times per battle are like 15 seconds. I got to the point where I would finish battles without even looking at the screen, just quickly going through the same imputs over and over.

Yeah, loopers were like shoving a piece of broken glass in your eye, but even they didn't stick around very long.

The only problem I had with SoA's battle system was that you had to wait for the camera to swing around the ship before the battle took place. I assume this was done for loading reasons or something... but I really wished you could have skipped those couple of seconds.

As for the battles themselves, they were fine. I even enjoyed them. They were not of the calibre of something like Grandia, but they were still better than average and didn't bother me in the least. :)

What can I say? TNL inspired us.

Ok great! So after this thread is inspired by what I posted (yes I was first), this now pops up as an official topic?!?

If they're gonna start taking after ideas from this site, they should leave credit where credit is do for pete's sake.

They did make a good deal about how boring and redundent the genre has become, but they could elaberate more on how japan vs US styles come into play like turn-based vs open-ended battles. Random, or comeplete realtime.

Or my fav, D&D style, vs anime/DBZ/Spikey-haired-out-to-save-the-world dweeb! :lol:

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Originally Posted by voltz

Ok great! So after this thread is inspired by what I posted (yes I was first), this now pops up as an official topic?!?

If they're gonna start taking after ideas from this site, they should leave credit where credit is do for pete's sake.

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This debate has been going on for centuries, buddy.

No it hasn't. The question was created June 26, 2003. by voltz.