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RPG Codex - Articles On Video Game Design
chadeo writes "Ok all you arm chair game developers, listen up. Over at RPG Codex there are currently 4 articles, written by professionals in the industry, on RPG design. There is A Christmas lesson in CRPG design by Timothy Cain, Thoughts on RPG development by Leon Boyarsky, Hand of Gosh Darn Good Design by Chris Taylor, and Treatise on Combat to Pink Floyd by Gareth Davies. All of them are a great read, and you can join in the discussion with the authors and see how your ideas stack up. What do you think is the key to a great RPG?"
Blood.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Most of the things these authors wrote about is common sense. Anyone who has played a few RPGs over the years will know this stuff. Not worth the read. Sorry to sound like such a pessimist/cynic/whatever...
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Lots of blood, babes with big tits wearing skimpy leather outfits, and lot of stuff stolen from Tolkien. Just the thing for the adolescent male with no imagination and even less knowledge of world literature.
Interplay. Fallout, Fallout II. Those pansies at Square couldn't even hold a candle to the makers of Fallout.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
And of course, multiplayer options immediately add a needed dimension in today's broadband world.
Its called the Universe, its propeirty (but currently being reverse engineered), 6.3 billion people playing, and things are bought with real money! The winner is the person who manages to solve teh final puzzle (why are we here?)
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
Since I am a long time die hard RPGer (Ultima series, Drangon warrior series, Elder Scrolls, kings quest) I've found that standard play-by-yourself RPG's no longer hold my interest the way MMORPG. Adding the element oe experiences and relationships with other people make RPG's Incredible
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
A "good" RPG needs a serious storyline. Of course, there needs to be blod and guts, the attractive women, a love story (if it's Final Fantasy), a cool beastiary, and sweet weapons, but the most significant aspect that can make-or-break an RPG is the storyline!
How about a detailed world that is actually interesting? A story that allows you to explore that world. And massive amounts of background info for people who enjoy that stuff.
Umm, one that I can beat?
The word fantasy. Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star Online.
RPG's need something that has very rarely been done: Role Playing. Less focus should be spent on combat, aquiring weapons and armor, and hit point management. Recent developments in user moded rpgs should start to let the plot, dialog, and interactivity of games shine over the same old same old. Big game houses are currently focu$ed on making a product ship with success. Small, part-time mod creators just want to make someone happy. www.mygeekdom.com A little corner of the net I call home.
postmodernsideshow.com
72hr rental on a 14th century scottish castle
24 crates beer
3 day's worth of pizza and junk food
7 guys who should know better
no mobiles
plenty coffee
(oh, and some dice, books, figures, mats and shit).
My point being, it's all about the people, the social dynamics,the fact that you're out-of-time. The system, and the way it's played are secondary, and arguing about that is part of the fun.
Ah, I guess I am.
Yes, Fallout was a neat game, but it's bordering on sacrilege to compare it to classics that Square has produced. Is anyone going to notice Fallout's impact on the gaming scene five years from now? Are they even noticing it now?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
A variety of weapons doesn't mean 12 different types of swords (a la Neverwinter), but different weapons with different ranges and specialities (more like Fallout).
As for leveling... after I hit level 20 in Neverwinter I quit playing. It wasn't the story that drove me to play, but the possibility of becoming more powerful and getting new spells.
Anyway, both NWN and Fallout were great games in their own respects.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
An RPG is just like a movie, only there is player interaction. A lot of people play RPGs to level up, get the best items, big spells, etc. I just play to advance the plot.
Basically RPGs don't have to do much to be good, they just have to have an interesting involving story that keeps me interested. However, there are a lot of things an RPG has to NOT do in order to not suck.
First it has to not every make it incredibly difficult and stupidly annoying to advance the plot. Imagine watching a movie and halfway through you have to jump through hoops to see the rest. That's torture, not fun. Not to say that the whole game has to be a piece of cake. But if it is difficult to the point of frustration something is wrong.
Second, it can't be incredibly short. I mean longer doesn't necessarily equal better. But on average RPGs that you can beat in a couple days often suck and RPGs that take a while are often much better.
Probably the most important thing to an RPG is direction. I want to be told where the next plot is. Sure making decisions is good, and multiple endings a la chrono trigger is even better. But I don't ever want to be in a situation where I don't know where to go or what to do in order to advance the plot.
The most important thing for an RPG to have (this is a pet peeve of mine) is short sweet and rare combat. I can't stand those games where you walk two steps and then are forced to fight horrible monsters in a 10 minute battle. And then repeat the process 100 times before getting to the next town. Combat should be rare and quick. It doesn't have to be easy, but I want to either win or lose in about 30-45 seconds tops.
Candidates for best RPG ever?
Chrono Trigger
FF6
Golden Sun
Dragon Quest (Warrior)
Secret of Mana
Any Zelda Game
Ack! Too many to name!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
As many as possible. I'm a math fiend and I don't get enough of it in my job as a software developer ;). I love lookup tables and obscure rules and love working flawed characters in a strict world.
Which is why I loved AD&D, v2, and why with the advent of _D&D v3 I have moved on to gurps. Yes, there are cool classes. Yes, it is nice that ability scores go to 500 or whatever. But that doesn't help my gimpy thief with the 9 dexterity -- and that's his highest score. When I play D&D3, i have to mince around like a pansy as even a pinprick does 2 HP damage nowadays.
Gurps has a chart for anything you can think of and a rule that tells exactly how to do it. There's no penalty for being a clever player (as the DM says "roll against your intelligence, dummy"), and therefore no defense for hack & slash.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I do not want to run around smacking monsters to level and collect gems.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The evolution of console rpg's would take a huge leap forward if they once and for all decided to eliminate random battles. A lot of times you just want to explore, not slog through 20 battles with same monsters every 5 steps. This is an artificial extension of game length that seriously hurts the gameplay of most console rpg's these days.
The key to a good RPG is that it is a good escape. I play RPGs to escape the boring monotony of real life and get a glimpse into some other world. This is one reason why MMORPGs are so addictive. From a story point of view, they suck. You sit around and kill things all day. What is so attractive about them is that you have real people to talk with. It makes it a sort of world outside of this world. And that is what a lot of people are ultimately looking for. They are looking for a world to escape to when the real world seems too burdensome.
Can someone explain to me why something called Final Fantasy has like 10+ sequels?
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
I think I enjoyed Final Fantasy VII mostly because the story was the most emphasized part. A good story offers emotional connection to the characters and the situations. In the end, it makes you more prone to play your character with actual zeal, not just go through the motions to trigger the cutscenes.
A great RPG should have me saying "I'm gonna kill that bastard," after he offs one of the main characters. My mood should be affected by the plot.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Highly recommended.
One annoying and disturbing trend I noticed recently is the "actionifying" of RPG combat. It started with FF7 in my opinion, where you had to hit the button at the right time for Cloud's sword to fire. IT was worse with Legend of Legaia (Which I liked, and I enjoyed the combat, but my wife HATED It because she plays for the storyline) and then I've seen recent games where you have to hit multiple buttons in a row during combat as dials and boxes move around and occasionally sync up. It means that instead of pressing one button a few dozen times per combat you have to dedicated a lot of though to the combat itself. This is REALLY annoying when you like to just level up and go to the next story. If you want to make a fighting game, make a fighting game. If you want to make an RPG make an RPG. There should never be a human reflex based combat portion. I'm playing the role of my character, not myself. If I have only one hand, and that hand only has one finger, I should still be able to play the game.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The greatest of the RPG's are not the ones that make the most money always. The ones that rake in the funds are the most addictive of RPG's. Especially when you talk things like EverQuest and the other mmorpg's.
As the market becomes more flooded in the next few years, people will burn out on the addicted games and finally the demand for the better games may improve more.
I have to say, I absolutely love your sig! When I first saw it I HEY! SPIDERMAN'S ON!
Morrowind
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I couldn't have put it any better with a +3 megaphone of "you are a geek".
MORTAR COMBAT!
OK, there are two. The personal interaction was always important to me. But the main aspect of any RPG which managed to keep my interests was the flexibility to allow for real freedom of action.
For example, you run into a locked door. How about removing the hinges? Chopping the wood? Going through the transom? Digging out the mortar out around it? Way back when I was DMing the original D&D, my friends would come up with this sort of thing all the time. Of course, it meant I had to constantly be thinking. But that was the whole fun on it. It wasn't "follow the line and use the objects exactly the way we intended" play.
Of course, that's why I didn't use the canned scenarios then, and why I don't play much RPG on the computer today.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
One annoying and disturbing trend I noticed recently is the "actionifying" of RPG combat.
Adding action to the game just changes it slightly. It makes it RTS + RPG instead of plain RPG. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself.
Of course, if the story is strong enough there's no reason not to allow players to turn off the rts (or at least the rt) part of the combat, like some square games do.
If I have only one hand, and that hand only has one finger, I should still be able to play the game.
But surely you still could play the game..?
Oh, you mean the computer game... sorry.
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
Who says you have to walk the genre line? Trying to create a game (RPG, in this instance) by just re-hashing everything typical about the genre is sure to get you a boring game. Some of the best games take things from all genres. Deus Ex, for example. Personally, I like to see people design games without trying to fit them into a certain predefined genre... why artificially hold your creativity back?
slashdot!=valid HTML
What do you think is the key to a great RPG?
The key is to not be on a computer. No computer can match the flexibility and resourcefulness of a real, live, flesh-and-blood person. CRPGs and face-to-face RPGs are 2 very different things.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Of all the RPGs I have played there is one outstanding feature that sticks in my mind and which all good RPGs MUST have, IMHO, to be enjoyable: atmosphere.
Obviously factors such as story, reasonable graphics, etc are all important but that is the case for any of type of game. What matters is how these elements interact with each other to product the overall atmosphere of teh game. ake the Bladerunner rpg for example and Nintendo's Zelda series - both are really immersive games due to the continuity and great sense of escapism produced by the games' ambience.
Rake Free + Mac Poker: CardCrusade
is a cult following.
Actually Square was about to go under and Final Fantasy was to be their last game, hence the final, it ended up, basically, saving the company.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
This is the worst case of false advertising I've seen since my lawsuit against The Neverending Story!
</Lionel Hutz>
Aaarrr... 'tis not a man, but an infernal eating machine!
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
It never ceases to amaze me how ignored multiplayer options for console RPGs are. I think most people will agree that Secret of Mana is a great game only made better by playing it with a friend. There's simply no excuse for how few since then have supported multiplayer. Keep in mind I'm referring to console RPGS. Are there any out there BESIDES Secret of Mana that let you do this? Alon D'ar for PS2 has some multiplayer elements but other than that, I can't think of a single console RPG that lets more than one person play simultaneously.
I'd like to see RPGs that explore more historical time periods. Has there ever been a game that explored pre-Columbus North America or even Native American societies in general? or Rome of some period? Vikings?
The key to a good RPG is a good acronymn.
Case in point, NWN. A perfectly symetrical one (if you reverse the N which makes it that much cooler), an exquisite palindrome. An excellent complement for DND (yet another palindrome).
I know that's what I look for.
come on fhqwhgads
...to realize you were talking about Role-Playing Games and not IBM mainframe programming. I should have known better.
The aspect which I most crave is obscured player stats. If you hide the numbers, most people would stop obsessing over them.
Get rid of explicit classes. Classes should be implied by action. If you don't act your class, you become something else.
The story needs to be flexible. Certain possibilities in the game should disappear after a set period, and no one should feel bad about it. There shouldn't be a static world. Instead, you should have a room full of people working on a constantly evolving world that takes into account the actions of players.
Allow regions to be depopulated of monsters.
Design for characters to interact. Remember MUDs.
I'm Abram Bender. You're not.
Really, a good RPG in many ways resembles a good book. If the storyline is well laid out, believable (not in the perspective of currently reality, but of perhaps characters actions/reactions), and flows well, then the game is good.
Then, we throw in playability/complexity. If you're spending 20 hours just to figure out that you had to visit some village in the middle of nowhere and talk to the old man behind the in... playability gets a low grade, unless of course there's lots of hints to that objective beforehand.
Graphics and sound count for a lot nowadays, and especially cinematics. Sometimes when the plot or gameplay has dragged, trying to get to the next cinematic has pulled me through the boredom.
Treasures/gifts/secrets: Treasure boxes, GF's, summons, spells. All those things that RPG geeks say to friend "Hey, I've got the wings of wonder, you haven't found them yet?", or "Check out this spell of almighty flatuation, it does 3000 damage+poison effet".
Still, if the game's story sucks, then no manner of graphics or effects will make it worth playing. RPG's often act as "books/movies you can play", which is what makes them so immersive and oftimes addicting.
A few people here are posting lists of good RPG's. I thought I'd add my 'me too' to the topic. The best RPG in years HAS to be Fallout and Fallout II.
Both games were huge, both games had good scripting and voice acting. Both games had acceptable graphics. In neither was the player left confused and directionless. The worlds had more than enough items/armor/weapons to keep the collector and rule-lawer busy. Player types could be widely diverse thanks to perks and primary skills. Virtually all problems could be solved in many different ways, usually a violent and non-violent way to take care of the slayer AND the scientist players. Karma had an actual affect and completely changed the way you had to interact with NPC's. Evil players were treated as evil characters, something missing from virtually all RPG's.
Even the subquests weren't always all available to all player types. Higher perception characters would realize when someone was upset vs. higher intelligence characters finding obscure information in computer archives.
I've played each literally 6 or 7 times to completion and I STILL find new subquests. And I'm anal about looking for them.
I honestly think the best RPG you're going to find with current technology / rule systems would be a mix of the psudo-realtime combat system and art from BOS and the storyline and game style of the original Fallouts.
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
Yeah, I bet they'll really remember all that spaghetti confusion-driven time-traveling bonanza on half-hour long scroll and click random-encounter combat. And the next 10 sequels. The cutscenes are starting to become less and less worth it.
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
Shenmue
'nuff said.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm sure I'm not the first to mention this, but everyone knows what the real key to making a good RPG is.
Dwarves.
Why do all these robots want to kill me?
Can I fit through that space?
I wonder what the next level will be like?
Why can I only shoot in eight directions?
Candidates for best RPG ever?
Chrono Trigger
FF6
Golden Sun
Dragon Quest (Warrior)
Secret of Mana
Any Zelda Game
Your list is comprised solely of Japanese RPGs. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- I think RPG players are pretty well split between the RPG sub-genres:
"Japanese" RPG: Very well-(and pre-)defined characters; strong, linear story; limits on free will. Examples are, well, those you listed above.
"Western" RPG: User-defined characters; more open-ended stories; more stat-crunching; more opportunities for non-linearity. Examples include any and all of the 9 Ultima games; Neverwinter Nights; the Fallout series; the Daggerfall series.
They're notably different styles of game design, and each sub-genre has its fans. I, personally, would like to see things move in the open-ended direction -- although not really an RPG, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City both really did this right. If you could combine the depth of, say, Thief or Deus Ex with the non-linearity and persistence of GTA3, boy... you'd have one hell of a killer game.
continuity is key. For example: I'm about 1/3 of the way through Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and it's awsome. At one point in the game you get whisked away to an island to rescue a party member and have to find your way back - it takes about 20-30 days in game time to return.
:)
Problem is, once you get back a. all the quests you had going are kinda hard to pick up again (mostly because your journal gets wiped each chapter. I can't begin to describe how annoying that is) and b. everybody treats you like you haven't left.
It's a real downer. I almost want to start over and finish EVERYTHING in athkala before I head for that damn island.
Triv
RPGs always have been and always will rely upon the storytelling as the most important element in the game. RPGs, unlike many other genres, have the storylines that give you the gut wrenching hatred when one of your comrades is killed, and an overwhelming feeling of success after you have conquered an RPG after 50 hours of gameplay. Don't get me wrong, I love other genres, but the RPG represents the creative genius in the world of game developement.
Your beef is not with random battles; rather, you seem to not enjoy poorly done random battles. I'm sure everyone can agree that poorly done random battles do indeed suck. You may enjoy FF Mystic-Quest style fights, where you walk up to each monster, but the drawbacks in terms of character development are rather severe.
Random battles, when done properly, happen to allow you to go around from point A to point B without being very predictable in terms of fights, while allowing fun character leveling! If done well, you won't meet monsters too often or not often enough, and the groups of monsters will be varied.
How do random battles give flexibitily? Since each monster need not to placed on a map, you have less forshadowing (except for boss creatures) -- this allows more time spent on map design. You also don't you have the rigid growth structure of pre-planned battles; look at the Enix RPG Illusion of Gaia -- unless you miss secrets, you will always play through the game in exactly the same way because of the battle system. Every upgrade you get has a defined ceiling, which requires you play in the same way to get them all. Boring.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
That's right, I had forgotten about Sabin. His was especially annoying for some people I know since they are terrible at those rolling movements required to pull his bumrush move off.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Compared to Grand Theft Auto, all RPG's suck. I guess you could say that GTA isn't really an RPG but a new genre, but nonetheless all RPG's bore me now.
The reason I play games is so that I can do things that I want to do in reality, but can't because a) they are immoral b) are illegal c) there are rammifications/risks associated that I don't want to deal with. For example, I want to run around and kill people, but that's immoral and illegal, and I don't want to take anyone's life in reality or deal with the consequences of that action. But running around and killing people is fun, in the fake world.
So, in an RPG the environment should be as real as possible and not use tricks to 'add to the game play' but still are fake. For example, animals in almost all games just appear out of now where or are spawned from some spawn thing. I want animals to come from the breading of two other animals, and to be hunted and eaten and the related things.
I want the characters to be where they are for a reason. For example, shops should only be open in the day, and when it is night, the shopkeeper should go have a beer or go see his girlfriend, and when he's tired he should walk back to his house and go to sleep. At night, when I go to a shop, I should find a locked door. And when I break in, I should find a shop keeper dashing for a weapon or sleeping. Not an empty bedroom. And when I see people on the street I should be seeing them because they are on their way somewhere, not because they are handing out the same mission over and over again.
And as far as missions go, they should be based on something and never repeated. Bar owner one asks you to kill the competition bar tender 'cause you look like the kind of person that would do it. He may repeat the mission to other people, but when the competitor is dead or something else happens, that mission should go away forever. A moving story spurred by real actions and human-like motivators. I mean, this can be pre-programmed but they should be based on an emotional need and picked out of a pool of possible solutions that fall in line with the NPC's character.
I always hear the excuse from coders that it's just not practical to code all this stuff in when it doesn't add to the game play. But it does affect the game play. The more transparent you mike the line between reality and game, the more fun I will have killing people or whatever it is I want to do. Things will start to appear that will be ultra cool that the programmers didn't even think of. For example, because animals like to drink, they will congragate around the water hole. Other patterns of reality will show themselves on accident as well that the player WILL recognize and will contribute to gameplay. (ie, the bar tenders daughter never goes out alone and is always escorted by a trusted guard, and there will be a frog plague because everyone killed off the snakes... )
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
Needs to be shoulder mountable and (ideally) under 10lbs.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
The previous poster named Zelda as a good RPG. Zelda games have _loads_ of combat, but the combat is realtime and fully integrated into the game, not breaking up the flow; it's also simple. Once you've learned the spin attack and how to use a few key weapons (hookshot, bow, boomerang) you can cope with pretty much anything. Of course, it's an advantage that Nintendo _really_ know their stuff when it comes to designing games like this. However much they pay Miyamoto, it can't be enough...
Unfortunately, Nintendo broke this terribly when they made Super Mario RPG. They took the Mario characters and world and implemented a Final Fantasy game engine. Aargh! So Mario encounters some Koopas, and I have to go into a menu-driven turn-based combat mode to deal with them. This is MARIO. These are KOOPAS. I have a GAMEPAD in my HANDS. I know how to deal with these things, I've been playing Mario games ince 1988. Let me get on with it.
I've been playing Baldur's Gate 2 recently, and it's starting to piss me off; I turn another corner and have to squish some more feeble monsters. Not interested. Planescape: Torment looks interesting, though, in which your own character is immortal and can restore party members by magic anyway. Freedom to get on with the story, that's the key.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
but there's nothing cool about doing coke.
:)
Fuck the hell out of the naked women, yeah, just don't do coke. Bad news.
ok, carry on
It always seemed there were three or four different ways any goal could be accomplished, and I felt that added a huge amount to the experience of building up your characters skills.
I don't know if you're still an active gamer, but Deus Ex is a more recent game that utilizes this open-ended mechanic with great effectiveness.
Final Fantasy V was good for allowing the player lots of freedom without removing the absolute nessessity of good story and characters. (Of course, FF3 for NES had this before that even, but the concept really becomes intrieguing with the skills of FFV)
If you don't agree with me about the bolded section above, just ask anyone what they thought of FF8 compared to one of the more storied FF games.
Then again, there's the third category of making the player *feel* like he's making a decision. Things can be very linear, but if you convincingly lead the player through, it won't matter. This is a good way to do things in storied RPGs, since they are generally extremely linear by nessessity.
It's been a long time.
Actually, this is answered in one of the articles. It seems, you just cant market an rpg game if you dont present it to the producers as ACTION/adventure/rpg.
Think (but not too much, it's a dull game) diablo.
Hmm what next "Extreme Ironing" anyone ?
You forgot the link. It's here.
"Information wants to be paid"
I think it's mainly a difference between the Xbox's and other consoles. The XBox is quite similar to a normal PC and thus can do things in a similar way.
/Huge/ world, and just as with Fallout2 it's largely an amoral one. Thus you can play a thug or a valliant knight, but your behaviour has influences naturally.
In this specific case I'm talking about having an internal harddrive. Since the XBox has that it's capable of doing CRPG's in the same way as PC do it. Ie a very large world which you can manipulate. This doesn't work as well on consoles since you have to be able to store all that data between sessions.
And if you like the Fallout games then check out "Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura" if you haven't already.
Err that was FFVIII. If I remember correctly IX had something similar as well, hard to say I wasn't all that impressed with those two. Action-fying rpg's isn't necessarily a bad thing, and you can't expect all new features to work or last. I don't feel that the sword extra damage thingie in VIII was a big deal, it was almost an easter egg rather than part of the combat system. But all "new" ideas suffer scrutiny. The active time battle system, when introduced in Chrono Trigger, wasn't universally loved. It worked, people liked it, and it added some urgency while still retaining the turn based nature of the game, so it has endured. Like I said, I don't feel that hitting R1 during combat for extra damage hurt anything, and I don't have a problem with extra little thigns to do in turn based combat, but I also didn't really think that that added anything to the game.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
One nice thing about Zelda is that it was marketed as an Adventure game more than an RPG. When you bought it you knew you were getting a game that would involve more action than some others. Also, the combat is intuitive and for the most part doesn't require incredible reflexes until you get to the N64 version of Zelda, which I hated. I was good at Zelda as a 9 year old with poor vision and poor reflexes. I should be equally good at the newest Zelda now that I'm 22 and have glasses and excellent reflexes, right? But the interface to the game was so broken because Nintendo was enamored with their bad 3D engine that I could barely function in the game world.
The original Zelda was close to being the perfect game, Simple interface that was completely intuitive, dynamic and interesting story that progresses clearly through the game, and it was jut plain enjoyable.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
was the "Auto" battle on Grandia 2. I left that thing on for every battle that wasn't a boss battle. Just choose a personality, and the computer will manage the battle for you. Great when you want to move ahead without micromanaging.
:) I hope Grandia Xtreme also has a neat system.
And Grandia 2 had one of the neatest battle systems ever
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Story? All you do is collect Triforce pieces and lots of equipment, build up your life meter, and then go kill Ganon. The nearest you get to character interaction is 'PAY ME FOR THE DOOR REPAIR CHARGE'...
Zelda 2 gave you much more of a world you could believe in; there were towns of people here and there, separated by vast spaces of wilderness in which the ruined palaces of the ancient kingdom still stood... There's a real sense of a vanished golden age, of the terrible damage Ganon did before you defeated him. The destroyed town of Kasuto was downright tragic. And here and there you discover ancient marble pillars standing out in the desert, sometimes with treasure lying about at the base. 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings...'
After that the plot goes into the past; I assume the King who returns at the end of Zelda 3 (on the SNES) is the same one who hid the Triforce Courage because he didn't trust his son, and who was responsible for the insanely tough guardians I had to beat in Zelda 2 ;-) It's a strange feeling, fighting for weeks to defeat a monster, recover the Golden Power and save the kingdom when you KNOW what's in store for the place. Whether I win or lose, Ganon will rise again and ruin Hyrule, and Kasuto will be devastated by monster raids.
I think Zelda 4 on the Gameboy was my favourite. The gameplay was similar to Zelda 1 and 3, but there was a lot more plot. I don't think I'll ever forget Marin... The ending is perhaps the most memorable I've ever seen in a game, though I don't want to give it away here. Took me ages to work out how to take down the final boss - the top-down interface makes you think in 2D, and so you don't realise you can jump his attacks with the Roc's Feather.
I've only played bits of Zelda 5 on N64 and 7 and 8 on GBC (Seasons and Ages) and none of 6 (Majora's Mask) so I don't fully know what's happened since. But GameCube Zelda looks wonderful and I _want_ it, NOW! :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I liked the story of Zelda 2, but not the sidescroller feel of the game. Yes, the story in Zelda wasn't incredibly deep, but it was interesting to me. I also spent many many hours playing the gameboy zelda (Did you discover missiles? Equip bomb+Bow and press both buttons at once!) and I'm planning on getting the GameCube Zelda pretty soon.
Hopefully it will be better than the n64 zelda.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Mod up I stand corrected ;)
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Zelda 2 was my first, so I didn't find it at all unusual... I think combat in Zelda 2 was far more intense than in any of the others until the N64. Top-down you can wander about with the sword fully charged and spin-attack just about anything. But going toe-to-toe with a blue bird-knight in the Great Palace - that's tough. And nothing has ever compared to the final fight against your shadow.
Did you discover missiles? Equip bomb+Bow and press both buttons at once!
Damn right I did. Nastiest red herring in history - I spent so long feeling _certain_ this was the way to beat the Nightmare Boss. But you can't equip arrows, bombs AND the roc's feather, and so I invariably got smashed. OK, it could have been done with really quick use of the menu, but that's just lame...
Incidentally, you've got me all nostalgic. I spent this afternoon slaving over a hot compiler trying out a variety of NES emulators so I could play Zelda 2 again... I think I might take on one of the challenges people have posted on the web. 'Complete the game in one sitting with no 1UP dolls' looks tough. Doable,though, as long as I'm allowed the extra lives given by advancing level beyond 8 - 8 - 8.
I once played Zelda 1 right through in one life just Because It Was There. Somewhere in the sixth dungeon my then roommate pulled out an air rifle and shot out both my computer's speakers.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This is much akin to the situation where you have this static list of "spells" for wizards and yet your "level 30 wizard" doesn't ever seem to have access to the spells and magical capability that the wizards (evil and good) have in cutscenes. Funny, if a lower level "student" wizard teleports directly to my position with potions and a note that he will bring your best robes, then I expect myself to be able to do exactly the same thing at the very least. And that does not mean that I get some cheesy "can randomly teleport on screen" or "can teleport within line of sight (of the screen)"
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.