Verticality and modern blobbers / dungeon crawlers.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

OP is fantasizing about 1994 technology, lol.

 

[luj1]

'Verticality' is a bad idea for RPGs. I've never seen it implemented in a way that improved fun.

Morrowind, Daggerrfall? I think Arx Fatalis too

 

[Bad Sector]

I think platformers get maligned a bit much for the tendency of developers that make them to make the platforming irritatingly finnicky and precise.

To be clear, i don't dislike platformers at all, i was referring specifically to the use of platforming in CRPGs, especially those with more abstracted elements like the party in a blobber. Think of it as while i might like ice cream and i might like pizza, i do not really like ice cream in my pizza.

Platforming is best used as a tool to hide things; treasures, alternate routes, enemy ambushes or ways to avoid them, traps and ways to shut them off. All of this stuff can be really fun if you hide it in the right spot and make the player think about his surroundings more.

These are nice in a platformer or even in an RPG with direct control over a character's actions like most ARPGs, immersive sims (at least those with RPG elements like Arx Fatalis), etc but in a blobber you do not control a "character" but an abstracted "party", so you need to find similarly abstracted solutions for these. You can hide treasure, alternate routes, ambushes and ways to avoid them without making the game a platformer. Note BTW that i do not mean you cannot have verticality or exploration, you can still have the party -e.g.- be able to enter a locked down village by attacking the guards, finding a route through the forresty hills behind the village, going through some cave that connects to a well inside the village, etc and these routes can have treasures (e.g. in cave corridors, in the trees -you could even have some alternative routes inside the forrest, like going through abandoned elven village near the treetops or on the ground, etc).

My warn/worry is about doing those via platforming instead of some sort of character/party-based abstraction: the most obvious would be that your warriors (if any) should be strong enough to battle the guards, but for the alternative routes you shouldn't be able to go in the lower cave sections because you jumped at the right rocks or climb to the abandoned elven village because you grabbed some ladders, you should be able to do these only if your *party's characters* have the appropriate skills and should be done in a way that acknowledges that you are controlling an entire party instead of a single character: e.g. to climb the trees or go down the caves you should have a character with the knowledge/skill to make ladders *and* the materials for all party members (taking into the account the party member characteristics: e.g. if your party has a flying fairy chances are you wont need to worry about her).

Basically these "problems" should not be solvable via means that would take advantage of the player being good at Tomb Raider or Mario 64 but via means that would take advantage of his party setup and the abilities/stats/skills the characters in his party (preferably via consistent means instead of scripting special cases, but that's another discussion).

 

[Nifft Batuff]

A very strange japanese wizardry clone is Kowloon Highschool Cronicle. There is a recent english remaster, also for PC.



The game has many strange and innovative mechanics and, in particular, some related to verticality. Each level is a full 3D puzzle, with layers of different height and stairs. You can also use ropes to connect different levels, also not only vertically, but diagonally and horizontally too. You can jump to navigate chasms, the distance can be fine tuned in the action turn, and the max distance depends on your stats.

The combat is like a turn based fps, i.e. you need to physically point exacly where you want to shoot/hit, different weapons have different optimal ranges, etc. The combat is dynamic, meaning that you and enemies can spend action points to move all around the level in the same combat session.

The main problem is that the game is slow as fuck. There are also some VN sessions with opaque mechanics, also these are slow as fuck, with texts one letter at a time that need an eternity to be witten on the screen. No options to change the velocity.

 

[Silvanus]

The main problem is that the game is slow as fuck. There are also some VN sessions with opaque mechanics, also these are slow as fuck, with texts one letter at a time that need an eternity to be witten on the screen. No options to change the velocity.

I clicked around the video repeatedly and 80% of what I found was dialogue. This excruciating method of text presentation is honestly one of the biggest barriers stopping me from getting into JRPGs more seriously, since many of them have ostensibly good dungeon crawling. Cool soundtrack though!