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Best combatfag game for build tinkering?

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The Etrian Odyssey games might fit the bill, particularly the 3rd one. It's a little on the easy side compared to the first two entries, but the class dynamics are significantly more interesting. I haven't played IV, so I can't comment on that one.
 

TheGreatOne

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Are there any obscure/indy RPGs with Wizardry like character creator and WoW type character specs? It'd be a dream RPG if you could combine Wizardry type race&class diversity with wow type talent spec diversity. What I mean by the latter is that in WoW you often had different viable hybrid specs (reckoning paladins, shockadins, Presence of Mind+Pyroblast mages etc) and in 2v2 and 3v3 arena it was very important to spec characters in a way that allowed for great synergy between party members. Even though there very few optimal builds (and even entire talent trees were often useless in vanilla&TBC), you still some times had to make agonizing choices between different talents when choosing what kind of spec would serve you the best with your current team set up. That is of course before Blizzard dumbed down speccing later on, I'm talking about what speccing was like back in 2007-2008 during Burning Crusade.

Labyrinth of Touhou (and 2) derserves a mention as well I'd say. The long term strategy of party building isn't terribly relevant because you can always swap members and equipment around, but the interaction between party members and the importance of distributing your resources amongst them is very important, and the cast is incredibly varied too. Not the kind of game you do multiple playthroughs of, but the combat won't get stale because you're constantly changing how you approach things (or at least you should, unless you manage to find something really optimal and brute force your way through, but even that won't last forever.)
Is this game a better dungeon crawler than SMT Nocturne and Strange Journey?
Nocturne (and SMT: Devil Survivor 2, which is grid based SRPG) is a way better combat fag game than any Western RPG released after Wiz8/JA2/ToEE that I've played. KOTC is a strong exception and a superb game, but Nocturne has more variety in party creation, which allows for more varying and creative strategies when beating tough bosses. And even though there's no mapping like in Etrian Odyssey, Nocturne had later on the kind hazardous dungeons (dark rooms, poison traps, traps that would make you fall down to a lower level of the dungeon, teleporters) that you never see in modern RPGs.
While Divinity Original Sin had a promising battle system (with some flaws), the encounter design and difficulty plummeted after the first area, where as Devil Survivor (and other JRPGs as well, though none as good as DeSu2 imo) had way harder encounters and it had consistently high difficulty right till the end.
 
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Damned Registrations

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There are threads on the Labyrinth of Touhou games (second one was translated very recently) in the jrpg forum. A search for the one about the first game should be pretty easy, plenty of details there.

I'd personally rate them higher than Nocturne, but I'd say all 3 are pretty close to eachother near the top of dungeon crawlers. Also, the artstyle/atmosphere of touhou is pretty awful for anything besides bullet hell shmups, so Nocturne wins in that department hands down. But the combat itself in Labyrinth of Touhou is excellent, and the exploration of the labyrinth is pretty cool too, especially later on with all the bullshit tricks like pitfalls and teleporters and so forth.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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Blackguards character system was pretty deep and gave great build flexibility. Biggest issue was poor itemization making some build choices far worse simply due to lack of item variety in game. Pity.
 

Agesilaus

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It's not a party-based game, and it's not focused on combat necessarily, but Age of Decadence has a lot of different combat builds and approaches.
 

pakoito

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I'm trying to acquire the Labyrinth of Touhou games, but apparently I cannot play unless I change my Windows into moonspeak config locale. Am I correct?
 

Ignatius Reilly

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Both games I've restarted many times just because I got so involved in the skill/class system, and wanted to try new things out. I'd also mention ToEE, because of the combat, but after many play throughs, the types of classes you can succeed with feels limited. Fighter with long reach weapon just owns so hard. I still start it up from time to time for the dual wield back stab animation.
 
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TigerKnee

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There's a version on the webpacge with the content and no retardo difficulty tho. I'd start with that one instead.
Yeah, that's the optimal version of 1.3 to play, but it's 2 versions out of date, sadly. Creator got lazy on maintaining it.

Or this one. It's a pity it doesn't work on the PPSSPP emu because scaling for 2D sprites in there is just brillo.[/QUOTE]
Isn't PPSSPP for PSP game? LFT is for the PSX version.
 

pakoito

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Physical PSPs can play PSX ISOs because they have an internal emulator, but that's not included in PPSSPP. 1.3 has a version for the PSP port, LFT doesn't :(
 

TigerKnee

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Uh, why don't you use a PSX emulator then...?

1.3 PSP version doesn't even have an Easy-mode version, does it?
 

pakoito

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Uh, why don't you use a PSX emulator then...?

1.3 PSP version doesn't even have an Easy-mode version, does it?
I can, I will, but old PSX emulators are miles away from new semi-pro ones like Dolphin or PPSSPP, feature and UI wise.

Have you seen the texture scaler in PPSSPP? It makes PSP games look better than PC AAA releases by using xBRZ filters and custom shaders.

No AA, just texture scaling x3 xBRZ.

unlosingranger01gzoad.jpg


 
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Crooked Bee

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I'm trying to acquire the Labyrinth of Touhou games, but apparently I cannot play unless I change my Windows into moonspeak config locale. Am I correct?

Are you aware you can just use AppLocale? That's what I used to play the 1st game.

The 2nd one works fine for me even without AppLocale though. Just be sure to launch the executable that comes with the English patch.
 

pakoito

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Found out ePSXe actually does have a xBRZ plugin, the game runs just fine. My OCD only needs now that the emulator starts windowed automatically.

EDIT: Aaaaand done.
 
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sser

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I'm not a big fan of the game really, but Lords of Xulima has a lot of class tinkering.
 

Grimwulf

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Can't go wrong with Valkyria Chronicles, although I'm not sure if it's available on PC. Basically the whole game is about managing your roster, which is enourmos, and fighting. And the fight is always challenging, even on medium difficulty. Plus the story and visuals are great.

Agree with already mentioned JA2, NWN2 and IWD2, but they should be pretty obvious. Almost every jRPG suits your request just fine, but as you already said, they don't provide a challenge. Blackguards don't give you a roster to choose from, and only so much possible builds to play with. On the other hand, the combat is so good, especially the arena. But it gets really easy and boring near the end. Shadowrun Returns is basically the same, but better at every point. Especially Dragonfall DLC. Totally different setting tho.

Banner Saga has a decent roster, but it's insultingly short and easy. Konung series, which I'm enjoying right now, let's you gather up to 10 people in your party, and there is plenty to choose from, but the combat is pretty straight-forward, real-time and Diablo-like. Disciples 2 is a great game, if you don't mind strategy elements, like resources and global map magic, - it has a unique atmosphere to it. And is also all about right roster managment and turn-based combat. If you played and liked Disciples 2, I would also recomend Dominions 4. The last one don't give you direct control over battles, but the pre-battle preparations are incredibly deep and complex. And the ongoing apocalypse atmosphere is there too.

Oh, and Might&Magic series are decently challenging as well. 6 and 7 may be hard, but 8 is my personal favourite.
 

Duellist_D

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
I'd second Blackguards.
I think later patches added quite a few more items for customization, but i'm not entirely sure, since i spend a lot of my time in it while it was still Early Access Beta.

JA2 V1.3, while incredibly fun, overdoes it sometimes in regard of the amount of items.

There might be tons of guns, but many of the Eastern-Block types could just have been let out, since they are utter crap.
 

agris

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uh, Underrail? Read Blaine's preview to draw your own conclusions, but if you don't mind a non-squad game, I (in addition to Blaine) think it has a great and varied character build system that supports a lot of different styles of play.
 

Nikaido

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The Etrian Odyssey games might fit the bill, particularly the 3rd one. It's a little on the easy side compared to the first two entries, but the class dynamics are significantly more interesting. I haven't played IV, so I can't comment on that one.
EOIV has solid class dynamics. Figuring out the right party setup is pleasurable in that game, a lot of viable combinations between main and subclasses and skill specializations.
 

pakoito

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Despite not having answered every single response, I've considered all of them. One lot I've already played and/or ADHD bounced off them or are not fit for short gaming bursts. Others are a bit of a hassle to play on PC, like games from PS2/3 or DS or 3DS. Or too many GB to have installed (10+ GBs), or are still on Early Access. A couple of them have been just recently installed to be played when possible.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.
 
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Play Guild Wars if you want a game with a huge amount of skills to play around and synergize with. The skill system takes a lot of inspiration from Magic: The Gathering, and there is a shit ton of possibilities for yourself and your 7 AI heroes.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I see Final Fantasy Tactics mentioned but not Tactics Ogre. Both games are made by the same studio, but if one mentions the first, the second one should also be mentioned.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance can also be emulated. It's a worse game than the two games mentioned above, but you can do a lot of customizing.
 

pakoito

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I've started with Labyrinth Of Touhou 2, and although I'm enjoying it so far I've found out that after only 3 floors some boss fights do require a specific strategy or character to be defeated, regardless of party composition. Which is a bit annoying and against this thread's purpose, but not enough to put me away from it yet.
 

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