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Can We Get Another Turn-Based CRPG Already?

Lonely Vazdru

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Crooked Bee said:
There's no difference between a pokemon and a dark elf; both are silly
If you think dark elves are silly I can't imagine how you can stomach Pokemons.

Crooked Bee said:
Why care ?
Oh, alright.
 

made

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Lonely Vazdru said:
Sometimes these threads make me curious, I mean : Turn based RPG with good combat and character leveling up ?
So I Google the shit up, and come up with this :

Le fuck ?
Yea, my thoughts exactly. But then I figured I've put up with New Vegas so maybe I can play this if I close my eyes or something. Grabbed the ROM but game won't run, just black screen. Can anyone confirm if EO works on DeSMuME?
 

Crooked Bee

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Dunno about EO1, but EO3 works on Desmume no probs. And it's better than the first imho (more diversity, less of monotonous grinding overall no matter your playstyle).

Lonely Vazdru said:
Crooked Bee said:
There's no difference between a pokemon and a dark elf; both are silly
If you think dark elves are silly I can't imagine how you can stomach Pokemons.

Easy: they are equally silly.
 

made

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Same problem with all 3 of them: music plays, but no picture. Guess I need to configure it properly.
 

Tolknaz

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Lonely Vazdru said:
Sometimes these threads make me curious, I mean : Turn based RPG with good combat and character leveling up ?
So I Google the shit up, and come up with this :

Le fuck ?

QFT. Now, even if these games had the best gameplay in the world, i still couldn't bring myself to play anything with such absolute garbage art style. Any westerners, who enjoy this shit are either complete and utter loons, weeaboos, pedophiles or children. And yes, dark Spire looks very cool. Time to get me an emulator i guess.
 

Miew

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made said:
Same problem with all 3 of them: music plays, but no picture. Guess I need to configure it properly.

All I can say is that it's definitely possible. Sorry, don't know much about the software myself. =)

If you want to try one of the games, I think the third is the best one. Not only are the classes balanced a little bit better, but later in the game you get the option to assign anyone a subclass that they can learn skills from as well. This makes for some very interesting and fun options as you explore the synergies.

I think it's understandable to dislike a game because of its art style. Strange Journey has similar gameplay but different art style:
strangejourney-14.png


Most turn based RPGs that come out nowadays are japanese dungeon crawlers, and it seems like those are released exclusively on handhelds.

Well, there's also Wizardry for the PS2 and PS3. Oddly enough, some of the PS2 titles look better than the PS3 ones:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZyIC5CS7qwo < PS3 game with the most basic gameplay it seems. Maybe they never saw Wiz8...

http://www.youtube.com/embed/rLhB-Tho1vg < PS2 game that looks pretty interesting. Animations might get annoying after a while, but it seems to have more depth to it than the other japanese Wiz titles.
Haven't played either one of them, but I might try out the PS2 game. Although nowadays, I'd actually prefer a game like this to be on handheld.
 

PorkaMorka

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I'm not really convinced that turn based is a particularly good way to show off fancy 3d graphics, unless you're talking about those horrible Japanese cutscene spell animations that you would only ever want to watch once.

Fancy graphics and animations can make turn based seem much more silly than it would with simple tiles.

Take an example where the same game exists in a tile based format and then in a fancy 3d format.

Bloodbowl.

When you display everything in fancy 3d graphics, with full animation and so on, it kind of looks silly to have your ball carrier run into the end zone, while the opposing players all stand there looking menacing, posing aggressively, performing their idle animations and rotating in place to face the ball carrier, but not lifting a finger to stop the ball carrier as he as he runs right past them to score.

With tiles, the exact same mechanics will play out, but everything remains abstracted so the silliness of turn based football isn't rubbed into your face the same way, and it's clear that it is just the game's way of representing the ball carrier bursting through a hole in the line.
 

7hm

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Very poorly worded title, very crap article, but I agree with the sentiment.

He could mention (or look for) some of the indies that have come out with this gameplay style in the last little while. He could also pump Dark Spire up more.

It seems like he wants a MM world of xeen copy rather than another turn based dungeon crawler.
 

deuxhero

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PorkaMorka said:
I'm not really convinced that turn based is a particularly good way to show off fancy 3d graphics, unless you're talking about those horrible Japanese cutscene spell animations that you would only ever want to watch once.

Fancy graphics and animations can make turn based seem much more silly than it would with simple tiles.

Take an example where the same game exists in a tile based format and then in a fancy 3d format.

Bloodbowl.

When you display everything in fancy 3d graphics, with full animation and so on, it kind of looks silly to have your ball carrier run into the end zone, while the opposing players all stand there looking menacing, posing aggressively, performing their idle animations and rotating in place to face the ball carrier, but not lifting a finger to stop the ball carrier as he as he runs right past them to score.

With tiles, the exact same mechanics will play out, but everything remains abstracted so the silliness of turn based football isn't rubbed into your face the same way, and it's clear that it is just the game's way of representing the ball carrier bursting through a hole in the line.

Counterpoint. Temple of Elemental Evil. Magic Missle still looks cool, and doesn't take an uneeded amount of time.
 

Virtual Vice

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PorkaMorka said:
I'm not really convinced that turn based is a particularly good way to show off fancy 3d graphics, unless you're talking about those horrible Japanese cutscene spell animations that you would only ever want to watch once.

Fancy graphics and animations can make turn based seem much more silly than it would with simple tiles.

Take an example where the same game exists in a tile based format and then in a fancy 3d format.

Bloodbowl.

When you display everything in fancy 3d graphics, with full animation and so on, it kind of looks silly to have your ball carrier run into the end zone, while the opposing players all stand there looking menacing, posing aggressively, performing their idle animations and rotating in place to face the ball carrier, but not lifting a finger to stop the ball carrier as he as he runs right past them to score.

With tiles, the exact same mechanics will play out, but everything remains abstracted so the silliness of turn based football isn't rubbed into your face the same way, and it's clear that it is just the game's way of representing the ball carrier bursting through a hole in the line.

Well first of all I dont know what you mean by tiles versus a fancy 3d system, you can have hexagons or square tiles or anything similar integrated with no fuss with the detailed depiction of 3d eye candy, just a matter of switching cameras etc as it was mentioned.

You are not really arguing against the principle of high detail 3d eye candy matched with a fluid turn based system, just against a certain kind of art direction and from what I understand, a form of presentation that is present in alot of JRPG's.

The key is a balance between a reasonable speed of the turns and close in displays of the action in great detail, you can have a ton of variety in terms of animations and effects while the actual displaying of the relevant animations for each turn etc does not take that long, also you can add a speed adjustment bar to the preferences and so on but that is another discussion. So for example no "ultima apocalypse transgodshammer” bullshit spell animations that play like a 25 second movie of a meteor hitting a planet and so on...

From a classic western rpg view you should not have a ton of "fancy" long strings of animations that seem taken out of an arcade fighter game ten hit combo or some such nonsense, although it is to be expected that certain character types would inflict multiple hits per turn within reason.

Think status effects, or better yet body parts in a system that allows you to target different body parts. The attack/spell that caused the negative status effect on the enemy is displayed in great detail ( possibly even from a list of animations that depict various degrees of success of the said attack/spell). In the body parts example you could have gory detailed depictions of dismemberment that would not be there just for eye candy, they would be depicting a relevant combat result within the game’s combat system rules.

Now think of a mix between the results of both magical and melee attacks integrated in a body part system, or any other similar extra layer of complexity added to the combat ruleset. The point is you can have the eye candy without including a ton of fluff ( or even any fluff at all) that’s there only for its visual appeal.

On another note, and concerning the turn based combat plus new gen eye candy in general view consider the fallout 3 example:
Fallout 3. Good system? No. Did most of the people who enjoyed it get the chance to appreciate what a deep and well designed turn based combat system is or better yet how one such system might be? Most likely not. They however did appreciate the gory animations, and many game reviewers were describing VATS as an INNOVATION, and reporting that the VATS animations ( which were not that varied mind you, and of course had only a minor practical connection in terms of combat status effects since the combat and character development system was poor and shallow) “never got old”. I think this is a good example as an indicator that turn based combat is not necessarily buried when it comes to the big players in the industry, since like it or not Fallout 3 is a newgen mainstream success.

Granted Fallout 3 was to some degree a hybrid system but I think it’s easy to imagine how for example a new gen rpg with a party of PC’s and full turn based combat could be appealing to the new gen crowd standards, of course the way movement outside of combat and beginning combat would work is an important design aspect.
 
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Lonely Vazdru said:
The Codex said:
Dark Spire... Etrian Odyssey
Sometimes these threads make me curious, I mean : Turn based RPG with good combat and character leveling up ?
So I Google the shit up, and come up with this :

[snip]

Le fuck ?

Dark Spire looks much better tbh.

Surely we members of the prestigious PC Master Race can look beyond art style and try the actual gameplay, because we spend our days on the Codex whining about how everyone only jerks to graffixs and no one cares about gameplay anymore...

...can't we?
 

Lonely Vazdru

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Clockwork Knight said:
Surely we members of the prestigious PC Master Race can look beyond art style and try the actual gameplay, because we spend our days on the Codex whining about how everyone only jerks to graffixs and no one cares about gameplay anymore...

...can't we?
No. Not when the whole setting looks like a ridiciulous anime I would have laughed away when I was all of ten years old.
Taking a piss on D&D generic blandness while cooly swallowing this shit is insane. It's like dissing AC/DC for being too banal shit boring while listening to a Tokio Hotel clone.
Drizzt killed the dark elves for you ? LotR makes you wanna puke ? Fine, then show me something better but a retarded anime kid character fighting magic carrots doesn't cut it, turn-based or not.
It took some time for the classic fantasy stuff to become boring, this is immediately cringeworthy. And it's not like anime is any fresher than western high fantasy anyway. It's also been around forever and overdone to hell and back.
 

quasimodo

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Yea. What he said. I'm perfectly happy with KotC level graphics, but that anime shit just doesn't work for me.
 

Admiral jimbob

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I'd be embarrassed if someone else saw me playing EO or something, but I honestly don't see why I should give a shit personally what the sprites I'm killing look like. They're just representations of algorithms to smack my algorithms against until one of them disappears, I don't care if they're ASCII letters, hideous Lovecraftian monsters or anime characters. I'd prefer a good art style, but when it comes to dungeon crawlers (yeah, it'd be a dealbreaker in something like Morrowind or Fallout), it's nothing more than a bonus that's as ignorable as a bad story.

Also, people who get into in-depth debates about art style always sound a bit like they're gobbling down a few dicks.
 

Lonely Vazdru

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Admiral jimbob said:
They're just representations of algorithms to smack my algorithms against until one of them disappears
I'm not saying it's not that, but it's not ONLY that. I'm not a machine... yet.
 

Admiral jimbob

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Lonely Vazdru said:
Admiral jimbob said:
They're just representations of algorithms to smack my algorithms against until one of them disappears
I'm not saying it's not that, but it's not ONLY that. I'm not a machine... yet.

Yeah, like I said, in a game like Morrowind or Fallout - or, wall, pretty much anything beyond a pure dungeon crawler or Roguelike - it would be a deal breaker. With dungeon crawlers, though, I tend to look at them much more mechanically, I guess because they tend to be much more abstracted and (generally) "unrealistic", even for RPGs.

I'd certainly prefer it if they stuck to Dark Spire's style, though.
 

torpid

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Hell, M&M has enemies that look pretty ridiculous: giant mushrooms, giant candles with hands... they're just fodder for my party, so I don't discriminate. The only real problem with the anime stuff is the cuteness -- you're basically fighting to the death with cuddly, loveable opponents. Those weird turnip creatures that Vazdru posted on the previous page look like they just want a hug.
 

Unradscorpion

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This is where we differentiate between art direction and 'graphics' in a number of polygons sense
 
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Sure, but that would also be the point where we become gigantic faggots

edit:

torpid said:
Yeah, complaining about a ridiculous art style isn't the same as moaning about poor graphics.

Complaining about it I understand, it's what the Codex does.

But flat-out "not touching this" is just :M
 

torpid

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Yeah, complaining about a ridiculous art style isn't the same as moaning about poor graphics. Anyway, sadly enough the majority of Codexers seem to have progressively become bigger graphics whores than the console gamers as consoles keep relying on increasingly obsolete graphics.
 

PorkaMorka

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Virtual Vice said:
Well first of all I dont know what you mean by tiles versus a fancy 3d system, you can have hexagons or square tiles or anything similar integrated with no fuss with the detailed depiction of 3d eye candy, just a matter of switching cameras etc as it was mentioned.

Sorry, my point was to contrast the simple tile graphics of one version of Blood Bowl, with the fancy 3d graphics of the Cyanide version.

For reference:
2n6u7o6.jpg


Virtual Vice said:
You are not really arguing against the principle of high detail 3d eye candy matched with a fluid turn based system, just against a certain kind of art direction and from what I understand, a form of presentation that is present in alot of JRPG's.

Actually, I kind of am arguing against the principle of high detail 3d eye candy matched with classic turn based gameplay.

If the purpose of fancy 3d graphics and animation is to create a more cinematic, "immersive" and "real feeling" (not necessarily realistic) visual experience in a game, then that seems to conflict with breaking up the action into separate turns.

You spent all that money and time to create breathtakingly fluid animations for the defenders, but then due the to turn based mechanics they're forced to just stand there looking silly while the ball carrier runs past them into the endzone.

So yeah, there is an something of a conflict there, as the fancy graphics cause you to expect a cinematic, real feeling experience, and the turn based mechanics force the players to act in a completely unreal manner, so it feels "wrong" or silly.

With simpler graphics, you're likely to expect and accept a much greater level of abstraction in the visual presentation, so it doesn't look odd at all to move your piece right past the opponent's pieces, if he left a gap for you.

Maybe I'm just biased by my hatred of 3d graphics though. Well, I'm definitely biased by my hatred of 3d graphics, but it's also a decent point.
 

Lonely Vazdru

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Clockwork Knight said:
Lonely Vazdru said:
MY IMMERSION

Yeah, well it is important to me, obviously. It doesn't mean I have to dress like a viking and speak in "thee's" and "thou's" at my computer, but it does prevent me from wanting to incarnate these kind of characters :

etrian_odyssey_1-6570a.jpg


and fight these kind of monsters :

article-1286815417955-0B91F591000005DC-853846_636x411.jpg


I might be obtuse but then again, you might be taste blind. Lucky you and poor me in such an ugly gaming era.
 

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