The goal is making it through the level. If the levels are easy to go through, and the only challenge comes from attaining S rank, it's not a hard game. It's hard when you're actually challenged to go through the levels.
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ATTN SRPG noobs.
- Thread starter Nutmeg
- Start date
Nutmeg
Arcane
JarlFrank
That's like saying "the challenge in an exam is writing down the answers.". No man, it depends what you write. If you write well you'll get an A. If you write average you'll get a C. The challenge isn't just to write anything, it's to write well.
Maybe you think ranks in SRPGs are meaningless cause you're conflating them with something like achievements on Steam. I can see how someone not familiar with arcade gaming culture and design might think that, but it's a mistake.
The biggest difference would be that games with rank and scoring are usually designed around it.
Take Radiant Silvergun for example. Play it without score. Ok you need to learn some simple routes, familiarize yourself with the weapons, the boss patterns, and that's about it. Now play it for score. Yeah? You see that? It's like seeing the world in color for the first time. Literally in this case, because a big part of the scoring is the color coded enemies. And boy, those routes you learned before? Boy do those have to change. Before it didn't matter if you hugged this edge or attacked that group first, but now it makes all the difference in the world. You start noticing how clever everything is. How much care the designers put in anticipating your every move. How much thought was placed behind every enemy wave and passage. It's orgasmic.
To say that's arbitrary. I feel sorry for you.
That's like saying "the challenge in an exam is writing down the answers.". No man, it depends what you write. If you write well you'll get an A. If you write average you'll get a C. The challenge isn't just to write anything, it's to write well.
Maybe you think ranks in SRPGs are meaningless cause you're conflating them with something like achievements on Steam. I can see how someone not familiar with arcade gaming culture and design might think that, but it's a mistake.
The biggest difference would be that games with rank and scoring are usually designed around it.
Take Radiant Silvergun for example. Play it without score. Ok you need to learn some simple routes, familiarize yourself with the weapons, the boss patterns, and that's about it. Now play it for score. Yeah? You see that? It's like seeing the world in color for the first time. Literally in this case, because a big part of the scoring is the color coded enemies. And boy, those routes you learned before? Boy do those have to change. Before it didn't matter if you hugged this edge or attacked that group first, but now it makes all the difference in the world. You start noticing how clever everything is. How much care the designers put in anticipating your every move. How much thought was placed behind every enemy wave and passage. It's orgasmic.
To say that's arbitrary. I feel sorry for you.
Nutmeg
Arcane
NPC #61873
Hello.
I don't know. I never played Fantasy General. I played Panzer General though, and I liked it enough. The only issue I had was you had to deliberatley lose some scenarios to play others, and also I didn't really like how upgrading your units interacted with the difficulty in that game. So while I liked Panzer General, I thought it didn't compare so well to Nectaris (a favorite tactics game of mine, although not an SRPG). If this is anything to go by, then these games should compare OK with Fantasy General.
Hello.
I don't know. I never played Fantasy General. I played Panzer General though, and I liked it enough. The only issue I had was you had to deliberatley lose some scenarios to play others, and also I didn't really like how upgrading your units interacted with the difficulty in that game. So while I liked Panzer General, I thought it didn't compare so well to Nectaris (a favorite tactics game of mine, although not an SRPG). If this is anything to go by, then these games should compare OK with Fantasy General.
Dunno, that sounds to me like getting high scores is more about using a very specific path through the level rather than approaching situations openly and having several different viable tactics. It's more about guessing which way the developers thought was the optimal way, than coming up with your own approach. Meh.
Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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To be fair, it's possible for a ranking system to be interesting, but it's not common. I'd compare it to speedruns of games; some of them involve dozens of cool tricks and types of mastery you'd never need in a normal game. Others involve doing one glitch or cheesey thing and then ignoring all the mechanics and strolling past everything that made the game interesting. It's the variety of cool shit that's interesting, not the feat of finishing the game quickly.
Not a SRPG, but Valyrie Profile did something like this. You got to pick who to send up to valhalla to fight in ragnarok, but they had requests for specific traits. Was too easy to fulfill and not a huge impact though tbh.
I second Wild Arms XF, btw. Honestly, the success conditions and the skill preciseness means it plays more like a puzzle game than anything you'd expect out of a typical srpg. Classes and loadouts are treated like keys to a bunch of different locks, but it just means the strategy part is very real and you can't sleep on the combat. Also the ensemble cast and story is top tier. It uses a hexagonal grid, you just can't go wrong.
Nutmeg
Arcane
Says the dude with a point and click adventure game character as his avatar. "I wonder if the bubble gum and paper clip will work on these 2 pixels... oh guess not. Let me try the next three. No maybe I should try using the rice farmer hat."
More seriously yeah in an auto-scroller you'll have about as much variance in a playthrough as a pianist playing chopin (that's enough for some), but in an SRPG the solution space for high ranks can vary quite a bit. And ranking is not necessary or sufficient to constrain the solution space either. Myself and a few others mentioned Wild Arms XF, no ranking there, but quite a constrained solution space.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
Compared to Fantasy General, they're garbage of course but if you lower your standards enough to play jRPG, Fire Emblem are alright if you can get past the bland units.
I would recommend Shining Force series but it doesn't compare to FG either.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
Or if you're not set on jRPG, Warbanners is a very good recent FG-like; no research nor secret characters, maybe one; but very good hand-crafted combat encounters, sieges and big battles.
TigerKnee
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
- Messages
- 1,920
I'm a little late but the controversial element of Wild Arms XF is that it requires you to bring specific skills to battle because most battles in the game will generally require some form of class gimmick to beat.
To be fair the game is designed around this, for example, you gain all active abilities of the class you're currently in while gaining the equivalent of JP allows you to take elements of those class out of it for multi-classing purposes, so you will never be in a situation where you require the Teleport skill of class X to progress but you never trained anyone in that class so now you have to grind.
But there's a sizable group that feel that they don't want to be pressured into bringing specific loadouts for battles when compared to FFT where frankly you could bring anything and win most of the battles in the game.
To be fair the game is designed around this, for example, you gain all active abilities of the class you're currently in while gaining the equivalent of JP allows you to take elements of those class out of it for multi-classing purposes, so you will never be in a situation where you require the Teleport skill of class X to progress but you never trained anyone in that class so now you have to grind.
But there's a sizable group that feel that they don't want to be pressured into bringing specific loadouts for battles when compared to FFT where frankly you could bring anything and win most of the battles in the game.
ebPD8PePfC
Savant
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Could you really do it without grinding? As far as I recall in FFT you couldn't win like that unless you grinded to the point of auto-winning based on numbers. Don't think you could do so in Wild Arms.
Damned Registrations
Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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The base game is very easy if you learn the mechanics well. There's a lot to exploit if you know where to look. All sorts of extra damage and accuracy modifiers, AI manipulation, turn order manipulation, abusing the terrain to avoid attacks and block enemy movement. People have won the game with a team of nothing but calculators without over levelling. No spells, just really really shitty units being moved around really wel.
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