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Thread: RPGs, what you like, what you hate

  1. #1

    RPGs, what you like, what you hate

    I was talking to my sister on the phone and we were discussing cool features in RPGs and thought maybe others might like to talk about it.

    Things I like:

    Decent stories
    Slice of life story or gameplay. Letting me play arcade machines, helping characters with life problems, being able to interact with items in a irl way, etc. Bonus points if the story has any decent "real life" writing.
    Game play that requires strategy.
    Varied and interesting enemy design.
    Collecting stuff that I can do stuff with. Clothes. Furniture. Weapons.
    Character creation.
    Character appearance that can be modified or changed throughout the game via game play choices or story events.
    Base or town building.
    Great Music.

    Things I hate:
    Blandness.
    Writing that is too animish. I cringe at the obligatory 'beach' event and teams that are obviously made to look like japanese school clubs.
    Grinding.
    Too many random battles.
    Not having a mechanic to speed up battles.
    Push A to win. Using the same attacks to win.
    Cumbersome or poorly explained game mechanics. I shouldn't be halfway through a game before I find out my characters can cast heal or something.
    Too many fetch quests in the same area.
    Not being able to jump. Worse: you can skip half the game if you could just jump over a rock.

  2. I don't mind random battles as long as they're over quickly. Suikoden 1,2, and 3 seem to do this well. Most random battles require little more than a turn or two of auto battle. Yeah it may be boring, but if every battle required actual thought it would get very tedious very quickly.
    Every game since Bravely Default should rip it off and allow the amount of encounters to be player chosen, and feature a fast forward option.

  3. The things I look for and appreciate in RPGs vary quite a bit between Japanese and Western-developed games. It's probably just because I've come to expect different things from each region.

    When it comes to Japanese games I tend to prefer SRPGs over traditional RPGs, as those usually feel too hyper-linear to me and SRPGs give me the experience of being able to analyze a situation and then make meaningful decisions. In many traditional JRPGs the stat/combat systems are either too straight-forward or super convoluted with 50 layered systems that don't actually add any real choice/depth. Things that I appreciate in JRPGs/SRPGs are great sprites and animations, nice artwork and unique character design, cool combat effects that don't spill over into cinema-spectacle territory, nice music, and charming dialogue. My favorite Japanese RPG series' are probably Ogre Battle / Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem.

    When it comes to Western roleplaying games, things that I appreciate include an isometric perspective, deep character creation and customization, fun, dark, and diverse dialogue and story choices, being able to resolve a situation in many different manners, good writing and character development, non-linear progression, lots of loot with lots of variety, and lots of stats/numbers to crunch and geek out on. I tend to not like the more action-oriented RPGs, and usually prefer something more along the lines of 'real-time with pause' as seen in most Infinity Engine games. There are a few exceptions, such as the whole Witcher series, which I love.

    Edit: I take that last part back, at least partially. I'm also a huge fan of hack-and-slash type games like Diablo, Torchlight, etc., and those are about as action-oriented as it gets. I usually just don't consider them RPGs.
    Last edited by koda; 12 Dec 2015 at 09:16 PM.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name View Post
    I don't mind random battles as long as they're over quickly. Suikoden 1,2, and 3 seem to do this well. Most random battles require little more than a turn or two of auto battle. Yeah it may be boring, but if every battle required actual thought it would get very tedious very quickly.
    Every game since Bravely Default should rip it off and allow the amount of encounters to be player chosen, and feature a fast forward option.
    They really should all have a fast forward option.

    Fairy Fencer F lets you hold down one of the left back buttons to cut out all unnecessary fight animations. I'm pretty sure Metal Saga did too.

  5. #5
    Something I forgot. I really enjoy exploring in rpgs.

    And I like it when the game has lots of different types of areas to explore and don't use a random room generator to puke out the same stuff over and over again.

    Tropical, urban, farms, huge machines, castles, caves, mountains, snowy places, summer hot spots, amusement parks, labs, etc. Give me all that stuff.

  6. I like a big seamless environment which is why I am addicted to Xenoblade Chronicles and X

  7. Oh, one more thing.
    Hate:
    PERMA MISS-ABLES!

  8. I hate perma-missables, especially when they have achievements attached to them. I also hate Japanese character designs. It's what's really kind of turned me off to JRPGs. The clothes are ridiculous, and I just can't get into games where characters have huge clown feet or schoolgirl outfits or some other faggot-chan (are we still using that term? Is it still dracula?) designs. Ugh.

  9. I like Japanese character designs for the most part, but I tend to appreciate good sprites more than full-blown portrait art or 3D models. There are also a lot of cliches there, obviously, so when one does manage to stand out or look unique it gets bonus points.

  10. I have a hard time playing any RPG without an aggro management mechanism. Without one, battles seem so sloppy and random.

    I also can't stand bad enemy AI. Why do characters one hit away from death so often get a pass in these games? Enemies pass by them to get to the buff dude with a high counter stat. I'm right here, kill me now.

    I love when RPGs have expressive camera movement during dialogue scenes. Quasi-RPG Vagrant Story is "shot" brilliantly for example. Too bad there are only about five of these and three are Paper Mario games.
    Last edited by A Robot Bit Me; 12 Dec 2015 at 11:36 PM.

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