Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Anime avatars in my Codex?

Should the Codex have anime avatars?

  • Yes, they are the key to understanding RPG Codex

    Votes: 1 100.0%
  • No, get that shit back to GameFAQs

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Needs more Connie Chung

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,324
Location
Flowery Land
Gamefaqs doesn't have avatars...
 

Mrowak

Arcane
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
3,947
Project: Eternity
Kz3r0 said:
Good post, but:
frog.png

*DERP*

This guy is supposed to be ugly as shit (fish, actually).

No one forces you to have this as your avatar. Actually I kind of appreciate that DU picked it. It shows that he has a sense of humour, chill towards his own person and more common sense than all of the malcontents put together, even though he himself might not like animu style.
 

Admiral jimbob

gay as all hell
Joined
Sep 29, 2009
Messages
9,225
Location
truck stops and toilet stalls
Wasteland 2
Reject_666_6 said:
Ok, you faggots, hear me out.

The Codex and TCancer are part of the same forum, which is why they allow not only RPG avatars, but also from different strategy and tactical games. Sengoku Rance is a game that is arguably a hybrid of all three mentioned above.

-You develop your characters, take part in (linear) dungeon crawls and death is permanent when a character dies. This is for the the mondblutian gang, but the LARPers have it even better: there is a shitload of C&C in this game, and not the fake kind either, and the replay value is very large because of this.
-Tactically, the game uses a stack-based version of the Disciples series combat. I won't go further on this one because it's known that the Disciples system is polarising, but in itself allows for many tactical variations depending on army composition and size.
-The final tenet here is the strategic aspect. You have to juggle diplomacy, economy, exploration, your armies and generals, dungeon-crawling, building relations with other characters, infrastructure and above all, which battles you fight and where. And all this under a measly number of actions per turn - this is no LOL I CAN DOES EVERYTHING Oblivion clone, you really have to plan your actions carefully and have contingencies.

Now even ignoring that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, if you take each of these elements individually, they're at the very least competently done, and in some ways they have surpassed what you'd expect from a standard dungeon crawler, storyfag RPG or TBS.

Why exactly are jRPGs so despised on the Codex? Because they suck as a whole, not just by virtue of being Japanese, but because quality-wise it can be pretty much proven that the vast majority of these games are horrible to mediocre, or at the very least deeply flawed by conventions adopted simply because the genre itself expects this of them. Time and time again the Japanese have been found wanting, and the few exceptions there are (like Chrono Trigger or the Shin Megami Tensei series) aren't enough to redeem them in our eyes. Yet the approach the Codex has evolved over time is to instinctively equate Japanese with bad, and to dismiss great games such as Sengoku Rance just by virtue of being Japanese, instead of dismissing them because it could be a bad game, which is where this whole distinction originated from.

Is there really a danger of this being a slippery slope? Of it possibly leading to adding random FFXIII avatars? Take another look at the Japanese gaming market and then back to this thread - Japanese games still suck badly and these really worthwhile games are getting more sparse. There is no logic in thinking that "We will now add bad Japanese games because we reluctantly added a great one." The anime art-style is a strawman. Many people would find the System Shock, Geneforge or Wasteland avatars ugly compared to the pristine Age of Decadence, Dawn of War or Arcanum avatars, but this misses the point entirely. We have these games on our avatar list not because we like the avatars themselves, but because they represent something that the genre should aspire to..

lol why are you a weeaboo fag xD be more mature like me

But seriously, yes. Knee-jerk reactions to anime are understandable, I loathe the art style myself. But if the game's good enough, I can ignore it, and if you can't, you might want to reassess what you want from games before you go mouthing off about how we should eschew graphics for depth and complexity in future (yes, I know art style and graphics are different, shut up). So many here claim that one should play Geneforge, Knights of the Chalice and Roguelikes for a while instead of judging them on graphics, and that one stops noticing them after a couple of hours. The same applies here, and I know you're worried your mothers will walk in and find you looking at anime, but it's okay. She already thinks you're stupid for playing all those samey-looking geek games with the swords and orcs.
 

Tails

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
1,674
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
But if the game's good enough
Sorry, but that has not been reason for the Codex liking of Rance game, eg because it's a good game. It's all about hentai/rape theme that the game offers, it was the main reason why in the first place someone posted about it, after "uprising" of Hentai game LP/topics. I can bet for a fiver that if the game didn't have this no one would feel attracted about it, expect maybe for calling it "lol weaboo faggot shit" like it happens to many more Japanese games, which could be good as Rance or even better.
 

poocolator

Erudite
Joined
Jun 25, 2008
Messages
7,948
Location
The Order of Discalced Codexian Convulsionists
I'm not worried; once the rance craze fades to nonexistence, people will be changing back to their original avatars, or some (non-anime) new ones. (And I'll be able to tell posters apart again, too!)

I barely recognized Luzur's posts because of his fucking Rance avatar ffs. I thought the Swedes were an :honourable: people. :(
 

Admiral jimbob

gay as all hell
Joined
Sep 29, 2009
Messages
9,225
Location
truck stops and toilet stalls
Wasteland 2
Tails said:
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
But if the game's good enough
Sorry, but that has not been reason for the Codex liking of Rance game, eg because it's a good game. It's all about hentai/rape theme that the game offers, it was the main reason why in the first place someone posted about it, after "uprising" of Hentai game LP/topics. I can bet for a fiver that if the game didn't have this no one would feel attracted about it, expect maybe for calling it "lol weaboo faggot shit" like it happens to many more Japanese games, which could be good as Rance or even better.

Come for the x, stay for the y. The initial buzz certainly cropped up because of the bizarre hentai fad we had going on, but it wouldn't have sustained itself this long - and gotten so many people actually playing it and praising it - if the appeal lay solely in the hentai bits. Hell, if that was all people wanted, nobody would be bothering to play it for themselves.

The ongoing love for it is certainly more than a bit tongue-in-cheek, but look at some of the posts (like Reject's) praising the mechanics and gameplay. Consensus seems to be that it's genuinely pretty good, but... happens to have pictures of cartoon characters having sex. Which is a pretty big but, yes.

If it had no hentai or anime style in general, and was moreover made by and about white people, half the detractors here would be all over it.
 

Mrowak

Arcane
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
3,947
Project: Eternity
Tails said:
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
But if the game's good enough
Sorry, but that has not been reason for the Codex liking of Rance game, eg because it's a good game. It's all about hentai/rape theme that the game offers, it was the main reason why in the first place someone posted about it, after "uprising" of Hentai game LP/topics. I can bet for a fiver that if the game didn't have this no one would feel attracted about it, expect maybe for calling it "lol weaboo faggot shit" like it happens to many more Japanese games, which could be good as Rance or even better.

Speak for yourself, will you. I for one thing do not like Rance for its banal, bullshit, moran hentai elements. In fact I repeatedly said that it cheapens the whole experience, is often simply disgusting and out of place. I mourn the fact that I cannot take this game to the open light and declare it the best motherfucking turn based strategy-RPG hybrid since... Hereos of Might and Magic III just because the devs made the decision they made.

I will not talk about game mechanics as these were covered thoroughy by Reject 666_6. I will focus here on the aspect that you and to a degree I criticise - tasteless porn - manifested in one element: the protagonist.

I do appreciate the fact that for once the main character is not a trite do-gooder bent on saving the world for no reason. No... Rance is selfish, corrupt, calculating bastard that will take advantage of everything and everyone - which you can see time and time again. On the other hand, he is also extremely competent and dependable, and at times - when no one's looking - he can display his good-natured, generous side. In the course of the game, it becomes obvious that only such a ambivalent person can unite the warring states and destroy even greater motherfucker than himself. Please forgive me sophistry here, but Rance turns out to be the heroe no one wants but everyone needs.

To make it clear - I do not consider this anti-heroe to be in any way deep. He's simple even simplistic, cheapened even more by the h-scenes to my regret. If only they were toned down as in Twitcher or removed altogether that would be awesome. Yeah, after such a treatment I would like to see more characters like Rance in my games be it as protagonists, NPCs, villains or whatnot.

And if Rance remained as moronical as he is presented I will still take this compulsive motherfucker over anything, ANYTHING contemporary Blizzard, Bethesda and Bioware have to offer. Just make him stay away from more serious titles with actual potential.

Yes, it's a sad time when a porn game is more complex and interesting than its AAA $$$ counterparts.
 

Mrowak

Arcane
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
3,947
Project: Eternity
Come for the x, stay for the y. The initial buzz certainly cropped up because of the bizarre hentai fad we had going on, but it wouldn't have sustained itself this long - and gotten so many people actually playing it and praising it - if the appeal lay solely in the hentai bits. Hell, if that was all people wanted, nobody would be bothering to play it for themselves.

Also, this...
 

GarfunkeL

Racism Expert
Joined
Nov 7, 2008
Messages
15,463
Location
Insert clever insult here
Not to mention that in the end of the day, the porn in Rance is pretty bad. Quite soon I started to fast-click my way through the porn scenes. The game mechanics are solid and the writing is mostly good enough. Rance himself is a refreshing change in video game heroes, in that he A) speaks B) is an ambivalent character, not to mention that there is a plethora of side characters, many of which are interesting as well.

And finally, there are about as many ways to build your army and conquer Japan in Rance as there are ways to build your merc-platoon in JA2.
 

Mrowak

Arcane
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
3,947
Project: Eternity
GarfunkeL said:
Not to mention that in the end of the day, the porn in Rance is pretty bad. Quite soon I started to fast-click my way through the porn scenes.

Piece of advice for will-be players. Use Ctrl key - it fast-forwards the dialogues making the shitty h-parts short and insiginificant.

Do not use Ctrl key with any other dialogues!!! especially on your first playthrough. The seemingly redundant information they contain may prove critical for victory in 3-5-10 or even 30 turns later.
 

Achilles

Arcane
Joined
Sep 5, 2009
Messages
3,425
POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
If it had no hentai or anime style in general, and was moreover made by and about white people, half the detractors here would be all over it.

That is a pretty big "if" though.
 

Reject_666_6

Arcane
Joined
Oct 30, 2008
Messages
2,465
Location
Transylvania
The best thing for the site right now would be an actual review of the game. I get the impression that most of the detractors here think it's just some sort of dating (raping) sim, or don't understand the Deus Ex level of detail that the devs put into it.

Also, I have to again point out the critical levels of irony in this whole situation. The people who donated for these avatars have done more for the community by donating than the people who bitch and whine about decline. Though Jaesun gets an honourable mention for being a high-roller.

Not only that, but the actual people who voted for the avatars are some of the most literate on the entire site and have produced their fair share of content.
 

Jaesun

Fabulous Ex-Moderator
Patron
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
37,241
Location
Seattle, WA USA
MCA
It really doesn't bother me now, now that I can block all these shit avatars with Adblock Plus. <3

Though I am sad I donated 50$, and all I got was nothing. :(
 

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
Nothing but the satisfaction of knowing you are keeping the Codex's server alive?
 
Self-Ejected

Jack

█▓▒░
Patron
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
4,900
Location
Yondo
Insert Title Here
Jaesun said:
It really doesn't bother me now, now that I can block all these shit avatars with Adblock Plus. <3

Though I am sad I donated 50$, and all I got was nothing. :(
ironcross2.png

:salute:
 

Tails

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
1,674
Reject_666_6 said:
The people who donated for these avatars have done more for the community by donating than the people who bitch and whine about decline. Though Jaesun gets an honourable mention for being a high-roller.

Not only that, but the actual people who voted for the avatars are some of the most literate on the entire site and have produced their fair share of content.
Riiight... whatever, I'm no going go further in any discussion after reading this, sums up 2010 Codex pretty well.
 

Multi-headed Cow

Guest
I VOTED AGAINST THESE AVATARS. DEMOCRACY HAS FAILED.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom