ATTN SRPG noobs.

[Nutmeg]

Please stop recommending FFT, TO, or Nippon Ichi games.

These games have very little tactical depth and are actually larping simulators.

This is because they offer many tactical options, but there's no point to them because a few simple strategies work for 99% of the game. The rest is just watching your numbers go up for the sake of it, or playing make believe: "this character shall be a white mage in order to heal his weary and injured companions". No you don't need a white mage, you have auto potion.

Anyway please recommend one of these games instead:

Covenant of the plume
Fire emblem 5
Fire emblem 7
Fire emblem 12
Front mission 5
Gungnir
Langrisser 2
Wild arms XF
Yggdra Union

Unlike the games most often recommended here, these games have failure states you're likely to encounter, they have ranking and scoring for high level play that punishes grinding, wasting turns or otherwise bad resource management, or at the very least they can be played as such without self restricting 80% of the content or any of it really.

Thank you.

 

[Ebonsword]

Hi, guys,

Please stop recommending games that I don't like because I don't like them.

 

[Swigen]

Hey! What’s wrong with Front Mission 3?!

 

[pakoito]

Why are some numbers bold?

Also just curious, why Langrisser 2 and not 1?

 

[Jinn]

Wild arms XF

Interesting. I've actually never seen this one recommended before. Kind of got shit on when it came out. Why is it one of the best in your opinion?

Suikoden tactics

Ditto this one.

 

[Ysaye]

Why are some numbers bold?

Also just curious, why Langrisser 2 and not 1?

Tactically it is better Cherie/Sherry/Shelley has the best arse.

 

[Nutmeg]

Jinn

It's FFT done right i.e. all skills have a use and depending on the scenario you'll have to field an intelligently put together subset of them. Sometimes you have little choice in the matter, but that's kinda the point. Grinding is punished FFT 1.3 style. Maybe not punished enough. I restricted myself to playing each optional missions at most once. Lacks scoring unfortunately.

pakoito

Bolded ones are my favs. Kinda don't need to play the others if you play those tbh.

I remember the first Langrisser being a little drawn out and I never finished it but yeah the parts I played were ok.

Swigen

Pilot eject was OP. On that note, Front mission 2 was ok but that network thing was stupid and the battles played out a bit sluggishly. Don't remember now if you had the option to turn the animations off but even if you could it didn't help.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What I'm getting out of this is that FFT would be a better game if it gave you meaningless achievements for finishing battles quicker or without losing a unit.

I actually vastly prefer tactical games that let you recover fallen units since it open up the gameplay a lot- you can do things like use someone as sacrificial fodder, and you will need to choose between trying to finish off all the enemies before you lose someone for good or trying to revive someone. And games that don't allow for reviving your units basically never threaten you; the only way you ever lose a unit is by putting them wildly out of position. You'll never run into an encounter where the enemy has a lot of ranged firepower you can't avoid and just have to deal with having your healer or mage focus fired into oblivion, which means you never have to deal with having your team fighting at less than full strength.

I vaguely recall Wildarms XF having an awful skill system with garbage like +10% damage with guns or whatever the fuck. I'm guessing a lot of those games are similar and flopped because of it. The reason FFT is wildly popular is because the skills do things that are important; being aware of an enemy's reaction skill can be the difference between killing them or not injuring them at all after a whole round of attacks. A summoner isn't just another flavour of damage, it can do things like put a damage shield on the entire team or mass apply reflect magic. Weapon types matter because guns ignore evasion entirely while axes have a huge damage variance. Equipment in general matters more because it makes you immune to various types of damage and status effects which can synergize with certain strategies really well. Auto-potion is OP as fuck (I'd probably change it to only ever use the weakest potions) as well as items in general honestly, though that's true of most games. But the core mechanics are there, and a mod that simply tweaks some numbers can make the game very challenging and deep. Fire emblem can't ever be more than a game of positioning and rock paper scissors. When you've played enough of these games that sort of thing doesn't even require any thought, the optimal moves are just immediately obvious. You can often lose a map of FFT and think "If I change these classes/equipment/skills I can crush this." That's kind of my marker for a decent strategy game and the vast majority fall short because there's nothing meaningful to change and all you need to do is be aware that the enemy is going to spawn out of thin air at coordinates X,Y on turn 6.

 

[Lemming42]

Fire Emblem is so fucking bad though.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

Fire Emblem is absolute shit

 

[Hyperion]

Unironically recommending Suikoden Tactics, Langrisser anything, and Covenant of the Plume. This fucking guy. Suikoden Tactics was less enjoyable than S4, and managed to be more unbalanced than every other Suikoden game, which is saying something. Kika, and Lazlo. That's the entirety of the game's useful characters. Nobody else comes close, and you have to continually hold those 2 back to force kill enemies with the rest of your team so they don't fall behind and become even more worthless. Oh, and the main character is a fucking faggot with daddy issues who refuses to kill fishmen because his dad was killed by one 10 years before the events of the game in the most boring death cutscene of all time. Cry me a river. I'll go genocide a mining village while you cry about fishpeople, you nerd.

Langrisser is cool if you want to die of old age watching the enemy take 72 turns per round while deciding on each move like it's the World Championship of Chess. All at a speedy 4 frames per second. No thanks, I like my games to actually move when I play them. Same deal when I tried Front Mission 3. Spending 35 seconds watching a missile fire at a helicopter is not my brand of fun. I got shit to do, places to be, not staring at a slow motion video of a candy cigarette floating in space for an hour. Branching paths or not, it wasn't worth it. Play Gemfire instead for both resource management, and cooler grid-based combat with groups of up to 300 Cavalry, Archer, and Light & Heavy Infantry in a perfect mix of Grand Strategy, and historical SRPG goodness from the golden age of Koei. Or Dragon Force, or even Brigandine.

The only other one I foresee being playable soon is Forged of Blood, which I'm actually kinda excited to play when I get the chance.

Gungnir

This. This ugly fucking piece of shit. I'll be honest with you here. You actually deserve The Crux de Guerre, Medal of Honor, and God knows what other wartime medals if you make it through this fucking UI alive. Imagine playing this on an actual PSP, and not an emulator and trying to deal with a 4" screen, 3.75" of which is taken up by shitty graphics, and ugly spritework.

they have ranking and scoring

Yeah, you get a Grade F for recommendations. Go back in your hole.

 

[eric__s]

I'm off-and-on playing Fire Emblem 5, I think I'm almost at the end of the game and it is insanely easy, far easier than Final Fantasy Tactics or any other Fire Emblem game I've played. I like it a lot more than the other Fire Emblems I've played, but to say it's in any way strategic is a generous assessment.

 

[Nutmeg]

eric__s

Are you playing for rank or survival?

Hyperion

S ranking Suikoden tactics requires spreading the experience pool. Also I dare you to three star every map on NG nightmare in Gungnir.

Damned Registrations

No more meaningless than score in any other genre. Without score there is nothing to do except get to the end, or larp, or self impose challenge that won't be much fun because it is highly unlikely the game will accomodate your "challenge" in a meaningful way. Take Resident Evil 4 for example. No scoring. What are you left with? Play for speed? Optimal is to just avoid every enemy turning it into a marathon simulator. Play for 100% kills? A bit better but super slow. Pestas? Enjoy knifing everything to death. Compare this with DMC which has ranking

As for the other thing about revival, I don't really understand your argument. You're saying "oh yeah when you can revive your units you're more likely to suicide them and get yourself into a difficult and interesting situation". But you can just keep your units alive anyway. If you're saying the game should require some sacrifices in order to even win, I agree, that could be interesting, and certainly the FE survival fetish is not the only way to go about things, but this is orthogonal to whether you can revive or not. Maybe I am misunderstanding you here.

Also FFT really doesn't require you to think about your classes at all ever because once you come up with something good, you just repeat it ad nauseum paying no attention to the field or anything. By winning the spreadsheet pre-game there is nothing to do in the tactical game. You literally can't lose as long as you move your guys to the closest enemy and press attack. Just waste your time going through the motions and watching the animations. I think Hyperion mentioned Koei games. The same problem there.

Compare this with Wild Arms XF which asks you to tailor your skills to the battles (what worked last battle won't work next) and also figure out a good sequence of moves within the battle.

 

[Latro]

Covenant of the Plume.

It's an unbalanced piece of shit but I still love the storyline and the alt endings.

 

[Damned Registrations]

FFT isn't a game you're going to be confident you have a 'good' setup in unless you either read a guide or grinded like a motherfucker until the very end of the game. If you're playing normally you're going to have plenty of challenge and keep unlocking new stuff to try and do better. Nobody sane is going to load the game up and use nothing but yell and melee and items for the rest of the game. Winning the spreadsheet game applies to pretty much anything. If you autistically reload fire emblem to get good level ups you can faceroll everything too. Not a fair way to judge the game.

My point regarding revival is simply that it's a larger design space. You can't put an instant death spell in fire emblem, for example. Or a scenario where 1 of your party members starts all alone surrounded by enemies they have no chance to beat.

Any ranking system in a game that doesn't reward you with items or something is just as meaningless as self imposed ones. They both tend towards tedious degenerate shit because they increase the challenge, but at least a self imposed challenge can correct for that. The question is, which is more interesting, trying to beat FFT with low levels, or trying to beat fire emblem in as few turns as possible? I'd say the former. It's going to involve a much greater variety of tactics, because the only tactics in a game like fire emblem is where to position your units and who to attack with in what order. There's nothing interesting about a difficult, monotonous game.

 

[Nutmeg]

Damned Registrations

I actually think quite the opposite. As in, I think being rewarded with items etc. for besting a challenge is bad game design.

You see I adhere to the arcade school of game design which is that besting a challenge should be rewarded only with more challenge, and not less. You just beat that boss in 13 seconds instead of 30? Nice! Next one will be 2x as fast and spew 10x more bullets. Get off the machine.

The reason for this is players that play games for the *game* enjoy exercising their grey matter, that is the point of the game part of the game afterall no? So if the player is doing well, this indicates they already figured things out, so it's time to up the ante.

Of course, there are people who play games for other reasons e.g. in lieu of reading a novel or watching a movie, as a power fantasy etc. I am not so interested in this kind of gamer, and I admit my recommendations and preferences will not resonate with them.

Finally the difference between game provided scoring and player imposed challenge is the difference between a game of soccer (well defined ruleset, scoring) and just giving someone a ball and told to play with it. 20 years ago, I would have prefered the latter. Not do much anymore.

Also I still don't understand your point about revival. Ok so my dude is surrounded by enemies at the beginning of a scenario and he gets killed. Why do I have to be able to revive him?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Because being able to revive him is a choice. You may as well ask why you need to be able to move.

In regards to your first point, I play games primarily to tinker with systems. I tend to lose interest if there's nothing left to tinker with. It changes the challenge from "Build something effective from this random garbage" to "Solve this equation." Both are potentially challenging, but the latter is simply work, not a creative endevour. I'd rather spend 2 hours in a character creator trying to figure out how to get the best fighter than spend 2 hours reloading a battle trying to figure out where the AI is programmed to aggro on me.

 

[Nutmeg]

Damned Registrations

But it's not like a game where the character dies and I can't revive him can't exist, or isn't a valid game, or is even a bad game. I mean earlier you said in a Fire Emblem you can't have this kind of scripted surrounded isolated dude scenario, but you can. It might even be good.

As to your point about the character creator, I think it gets to the heart of the matter well. The character creator is a safe space. There's no failure state. Except when you say "heh this is probably good enough." and it turns out you were wrong. But getting to that point you just merrily optimize away.

The field of battle on the other hand is wrought with danger. Now it's not only the final state that matters, but how you get there too. I find this more interesting.

 

[laclongquan]

Checking out Suikoden Tactic and it make me want to replay... dum tee dum... Front Mission 3 goddamn it!

 

[Damned Registrations]

But it's not like a game where the character dies and I can't revive him can't exist, or isn't a valid game, or is even a bad game. I mean earlier you said in a Fire Emblem you can't have this kind of scripted surrounded isolated dude scenario, but you can. It might even be good.

I think you'd be alone in that assessment, most people don't want to permanently lose characters in that game. Even though a bunch of them are shit. And while games without revival can be good (I'm a big fan of brigandine) I'd say it's in spite of a flaw.

 

[Jinn]

And while games without revival can be good (I'm a big fan of brigandine) I'd say it's in spite of a flaw.

This is a little off-topic, but why was Brigandine received so extremely poorly? It looks interesting, but I see almost no one talk about it. Also, what do you like about it in particular? Feel free to link me to another post of yours if you've covered this before.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I actually did a lets play of it, though I dunno if any of the image links still work. I think it was one of those cases where they just never made many copies to begin with in the west. They did a remake of it in japan that never got ported over, so I'm assuming it did okay over there.

I mostly like it as a 'greater than the sum of it's parts' sort of thing. The combat isn't terribly deep, it's not super pretty, and they didn't even finish the central plot line. But it's got a fuck ton of stories, including tons of optional side stuff to discover. It's just fun to play and see cool interactions when you happen to pit one of your dudes against his former master or student or sibling or whatever and they start talking shit. You can do some really broken shit with various characters by selectively mastering various classes instead of following their default path, some side characters start out weak and become OP as fuck if you take time to raise them, there's rare items to find, seeing a rare monster or general do some special animation when it gets a crit is exciting, evolving monsters into shit you've never seen before is fun... it's a game that provides an endless stream of novelty. I have literally beaten that game over seven times, and it's not a super quick game to finish, even if you never lose and turn all the animations off. I've done a few challenge runs of sticking to only a single type of unit to prove a friend wrong about it not being viable, and did a run where I let the AI command all my shit in battle to test my ability to handle things on the strategic level.

 

[Nutmeg]

I think you'd be alone in that assessment, most people don't want to permanently lose characters in that game. Even though a bunch of them are shit. And while games without revival can be good (I'm a big fan of brigandine) I'd say it's in spite of a flaw.

Cool SRPG game idea: Every nth scenario take the player's most powerful unit and kill them off, giving the player score for how powerful the unit is. I'd play it.

 

[JarlFrank]

Are you playing for rank or survival?

If you have to play for some abstract "rank" to make the game in any way challenging, while winning the missions themselves is easy as fuck, is not a mark of good game design.

It's pretty much exactly what you're criticising about "the player arbitrarily LARPing to make the game challenging". Except that the game acknowledges your LARP with a fancy letter. Woo hoo.

 

[Nutmeg]

JarlFrank

Rank is as abstract as goals are in soccer i.e. not at all. When they exist, unless they're broken in some way, they are the entire point of the game.

Whole genres revolve around scoring e.g. shmups. A large subset of SRPGs (often made by the same people) also do.

And it's not bad game design. It's excellent game design. Just like adding goals in soccer is excellent game design.