Help needed on "best/worst ever RPGlist".

[Dragonlord]

Hi everyone,

Long time no read. I'd like to ask a favor of you all.
Currently I'm working on a game design concept for an RPG together with some fellow students. To give us a good foundation for our concept we're doing research on all kinds of RPGs ever made.

If you know of a RPG that needs some attention, whether because it's great or terribly bad, this is the place to post it.
Give the name of the game and the name of the developer along with the year it was published if you have that information. And tell what the game is about and why it's so great/bad.

I'm also doing some study on the use of symbols in games/RPGs. If you know of a game which makes a strange use of symbols, icons or language, please post that too.

And to close it off, we might want to do an enquiry later on to discuss the do's and don'ts of RPG gaming. So if you're a die-hard RPGamer, please drop me a private note with your information. Especially an e-mail adress would come in handy.

I hope some of you will help me out here. Your information could be really usefull. Perhaps we'll even find a way to publish the game somewhere in the future.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Greetings, Dragonlord

[Kairyu]

Geez, where to begin? ... uh, well.

Anyway... uh, games like Tactics Ogre are really fun, and yet only have a couple in their style (Let me see... two TO games, uh... FFT.... I think there are two other games in another series with a few similar traits...)

It's not much fun to have to level up for eighteen hours just to advance without getting killed every other battle... Someone else can hopefully take over from here, I'm using too many periods again...

[Masamune]

DO: make an FF styled battle design

DON'T: make an Earthbound fighting design. (one monster on the screen with your health and PP at the bottom. :(

[King]

Here's a great game that you should steal ideas from:

Name: Valkyrie Profile
Publisher: Enix
Developer: tri-Ace
Year: 2000

Why the game is good: Pretty much everything about it. Graphics, music, gameplay...wherever it counts, VP's got you covered. VP basically throws away most RPG conventions and presents something original in every way. The game is based on Norse mythology, so if you're into that, character names and items will be familliar, and so will some of the events that occur in the game.

Basically, you're a Valkyrie, and your job is to collect souls for the great battle that looms over the horizon--Ragnarok. What you do for the majority of the game is travel the world, looking for dead warriors and killing lots of undead along the way. The dungeons play out like side-scrolling platformers, which is very cool. The battle system is excellent, and it's my favourite part of the game. I'm going to go into the battle system in detail, because you're working on a game, and you'll need details.

VP's battle system works like this: Each character is assigned to a button on the controller. e.g. Valkyrie is assigned to the square button, Arngrim is assigned to the circle button, etc. If you want a specific character to attack, just press the corresponding button. By pressing buttons at the right time, you can string together combos, and you'll need to if you want to get anywhere in the game.

Each character's attack adds energy to a meter. Each time you successfully strike an enemy, the meter fills up (but slowly empties itself). If you can fill up the meter in a single turn of combat, then you have a chance to "Purify Weird Soul" (PWS for short). These are essentially super-powerful attacks that are unique to every character. Using a PWS will use up a portion of the meter, but the PWS can fill it back up. This allows you to use another PWS by another character! You can do this up to four times (1 per character), but you have to know how much energy each PWS adds to the meter. If you can get more than 50 hits in one turn, then any further damage you do in that turn is doubled. The weapons you equip determine how many attacks each character can perform. Each character has up to 3 unique attacks, and you can execute them in any order you want.

Using a PWS adds Charge Time (CT) to the character that executed it. While a character has CT on him, he can't use PWS. CT decreases by 1 each turn, but you can eliminate it faster by collecting purple gems, which are acquired by nailing the enemy with combos. You can also collect blue gems and treasure in this manner (blue gems raise EXP earned after battle). If you can juggle the enemy (i.e. nail him while's he airborne), then you raise your chances of getting gems/treasure (I think--I don't remember well).

What I like about tri-Ace's RPGs is that their characters aren't just "stats" in battle. In most RPGs, you have your typical strong guy who can do big damage, but that's all he can do. However, in a game like Valkyrie Profile, your guy may be strong, but can he effectively hit an enemy? Does he hit high or low? How many hits per attack? How much energy does he add to the meter?

Magic users are a special case in VP. They attack only by using magic, and they have their own super attacks. They have unlimited MP, but they can only use magic every other turn (i.e. their CT increases by 1). A magic user's PWS comes in two forms: an extended version of the current magic they're using, or Great Magic. Great Magic requires a special item in order to use them, but they strike all enemies, and hit multiple times.

I think that's everything there is to know about the battle system.

[Paradox]

Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
Bethesda Softworks

basically all about it is great. it's real time, you can interact with whoever and whatever you want. The layout is great, especially when you have your info/inventory window open. very easy to use. There are alignments and classes and bounties... If you work at any of your skills they improve. Thousands of quests you can do, and a journal that updates itself when something important happens. The only downside to this is that it takes forever to get from one place to another, unless you take a boat. Also, you can't tell the difference between important and unimportant characters, so you have to go up to everyone and see if they have a quest, information, etc. to give you.

since the graphics are nearly perfect the game takes forever to load, and i have to turn all the features down to make the framerate good.

you wanted symbols mentioned. there are lots. you can go down into ancient dwarven ruins and pick up artifacts and stuff like that.


if you want a great RPG, make sure you keep in mind a couple things:
the graphics should be at least average. nobody wants to play games that look horrible.
the layout should be easy to understand. (inventory, skills, health, etc.)
STORYLINE should be good.

[gdorf]

I think layout is very important for RPGs, and is often an area that is overlooked by developers. No one wants to navigate 30 cryptic menus just to give one of the party members a potion. Bad layout will cause an RPG to have a steep learning curve, which takes away a large amount of the potential players.

[Dragonlord]

Thanks to you all (especially to King). Your information is very helpful.
The list is far from complete though, so keep sending in ideas. I know there are more interesting games out there. Oh, and don't forget I'm looking for really bad games too.
Hoping to hear some other interesting ideas soon.

Greetings, Dragonlord

[Beldaran]

Play Arcanum from Troika Games.

Arcanum was the best worst game I ever played. Here's what I mean:

They created a huge world with a huge amount of character customization, and an engrossing storyline. Sounds good, right? Yeah. Then they forgot to make anything about it fun. It's simply not a fun game. It's not fun to kill enemies. You simply click on them and your player hacks at them (or casts spells) until they (or you) die. It's boring and I've never beaten the game for that one reason. I love running around town and talking to people, but I dread actually getting a quest because combat is so boring.

What I like are RPG's that either

a) require some sort of skill ( a la Zelda/Secret of Mana)

b) have awesome/fun combat graphics and a huge array of weapons instead of skill necessity ( a la Diablo II )

or

c) have a wide variety of battle options ( a la FF3 or Chrono Trigger)