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I'd argue that even action RPG grinding can get dull. If you fight the same monsters in the same area over and over and over again, then it begins to wear thin. I've done my fair share of grinding in Sword of Vermillion, which was an action RPG (admittedly maybe not the best example), and it got tiresome after the 50th screen of black glops.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Well, notice I said "actually have some fun doing", I can't put "fun" and "sword of vermillion" in the same sentence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonmaster Lou
Grinding done right is when you put sidequests around the game, which if played give enough EXP, items, money etc. to make the following dungeon easier. That's how Pier Solar was designed, which means no "walking around in circles"-grinding shouldn't be necessary at all.
Same story with me, except with...Chrono Trigger(well my all time favorite for the genre ties between it and Grandia 2, but I don't bother with discs anymore). CT was the first I ever beat(on the actual hardware too), despite owning the original Dragon Warrior. The problem is that it's so one-of-a-kind, and I didn't realize that, so I thought I could get into this genre. At first I kind of did. I had no problem whatsoever turning to cheats at that point, and this was when I discovered emulation, so I was checking out all the translations as well. So I never noticed just how badly these games don't work for me, because I could cheat through the tedious parts. ...and man is this one tedious genre. At least, as long as random battles are concerned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Groovemaster303
I did get a chance to play PSII on the original hardware as well. Like DW though, it wasn't my favorite game to pop in. Funny enough, despite how few there actually are, I don't think there's one Dreamcast RPG I didn't care for. Except maybe it's most popular. SoA does have some nasty encounter rates. Can't say I'm fond of the powering up system in Lodoss War either, come to think of it.
I also liked the Suikoden series. It's amazing how much difference an option to not have to bother with enemies that are below your current status makes. As well an experience system that's essentially anti-grinding.
My favorites are all considered too easy, but too easy apparently is no random battles/grinding, which is how I very much prefer it.
I loved the original Suikoden, I remember many reviews in gaming mags giving 7 out 10 and It always used to bug me because it was a fantastic game.Quote:
Originally Posted by midnightrider
On the other hand I thought Panzer Dragoon Saga was alright but never as good as what the world seemed to think. I played through the whole game once back when it first came out. I have never felt the desire to return to it again since. I sold my copy for £120 about ten years ago now. Don't regret it one bit.
I remember always wanting to play Phantasy Star III but I never managed to get a copy until around 2000. Despite my thoughts about PSIV. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much.
I don't hate "walking around in circles" grinding. My first RPG was the original Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest). The GBC version of that game requires a lot less grinding, and it wasn't as satisfying to me. It's probably my memories. It impressed me way back when how they managed to take a game that's pretty simple and make it feel like a huge epic.
I don't hate it either, but I do prefer when you can make progress a bit, then teleport out of the dungeon once you are out of MP. Phantasy Star II and Shining in the Darkness are good examples.
I actually did start a new game of PSII. Who the hell would think Rudo's best weapons, out of what you can buy for him in the early going, are Daggers? He hit's for about 22 damage combined, for 400 Meseta worth. The Sonic Guns are 10-14 damage combined for 1280 Meseta, and the Shotgun is 10 damage for one shot, at 800 Meseta. Wish I had that 2400 now(stupidly ditched the first pair of Daggers, and had to re-buy them), I'd be able to buy at least 1 Ceramic Knife. Though you're probably better off getting a pair, since it's likely for Rolf(?), and the Sword is amazing(25 damage in one hit).
...wow, I remembered that bridge scene wrong. It does get graphic(well as graphic as '89 RPG graphics can display anyhow).
Interesting, it's been a couple years now since I played through Pier Solar. I just remember needing to grind in that forest area for a while, before I could survive my way out. Didn't mind it because it was the only time / place I had to grind in the whole game IIRC.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
I figured they made that one area for grinding on purpose?
Which forest area? There are those in the beginning, then there is a pine forest about mid-through the game. Anyway, none of those were made for grinding per se, but there are specific sidequests areas in both cases.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
Yeah it must have been the pine forest midway through the game that you mentioned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
Large area with a lot to explore, a lot of random encounters, etc. I had to grind a while there to survive through. But before that point, I did not fight more than the minimum amount of battles, so it was probably one reason I had to stay and grind there.
But I also thought it might have been made to be a specific grinding place / time for everyone lol.
Why did it take so long for the west to get PSIV? It seems like we got PSII and III shortly after their Japan releases. Did they originally intend not to bring it over, then realized they had to?
PSII is an amazing game. My only gripe about it is that I wish it were more playable without a guide.Quote:
Originally Posted by midnightrider
Well, it just reminded me why I'm not into this genre. The tedium of grinding is so damn brutal.
That's why I made me a super easy version, no random encounters and you're level 99 so bosses are passable very quickly.Quote:
Originally Posted by midnightrider
Now all I need to do is figure out is how to attach a small intro screen to the rom to explain what has been done to it.
I'm OCD like that.
Edit : And it's necesarry for Phantasy Star 3, where you need to know that you'll need to change to the one that has random encounters, or the last battle wont take place.
I need to figure out how to enable/disable this stuff in an intro.. but I ain't no programmer. :/
^Yeah, I could shoot everyone to level 50 and turn off random battles, but even just walking around from mission point to mission point gets dull. I just don't think RPG's/adventures are for me.
That said though, I can't help but notice that discussion of this genre from this era is always dominated by JRPGs. However, outside of Shadowrun, what do we know about the western RPG's?
I want to get into Shining in the Darkness but not sure if I can stomach the idea of a game requiring graph paper to literally play tbh.
Well the PC dominated the genre during that era and a lot of the console ones were (usually) inferior ports of those. I'm having a hard time thinking of any other specific examples that weren't.Quote:
Originally Posted by midnightrider
It's not much fun, let me clue you. I played Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy, and they were both a royal pain in the ass. Fun? What fun. There's no fun when you have to draw your maps.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gogogadget
Frankly, the lack of a map is inexcusable.
I'm not fond of the whole drawing maps thing, which seems to be most often associated with the first-person RPGs. However, there is a segment of the population (especially the old guard in computer gaming), that find it to be great fun. Many of them played the old SSI Gold box RPGs, Ultima and so on, and find the idea rather immersive. Often, I find them to be the kind of person who also played pen and paper D&D a lot, so I suppose that makes even more sense. They love feeling like they are part of the journey, and grew up in an era where patience and imagination had a greater emphasis. I grew up during that era, but I was playing adventure games and flight sims at the time, and only got into RPGs around the time of Final Fantasy 1 & Dragon Warrior. Different strokes for different folks. I suppose we can't expect to find every style of gameplay exciting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornelius Spunkwater
The fun for me back then was challenging myself to remember landmarks and other characteristics of the dungeons, and effectively mapping in my head. The fun was in the challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cornelius Spunkwater
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j80kbLow6z...pinion-man.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by Cornelius Spunkwater
At least Shining in the Darkness has an item/spell you can use to confirm your basic sense of where you are (it gives you coordinates) and what you've mapped out on paper (it shows your surroundings at a radius of 3-4 blocks or so). That makes a big difference vs. games that have no map feature at all.
Personally I enjoyed mapping out SitD, and felt like it was an organic part of the gameplay. And it's not just old-school RPG fans that like it -- my fiancée has never played any 1980s CRPGs, but loves making maps for games. Making your own hand-drawn map of a game definitely adds an extra layer of appreciation to the experience, even if it can get tiresome after a while.
Shining in the Darkness is perfectly playable without manually mapping everything.
When they were still new, I played the Phantasy Star games, Final Fantasy, Mana, Chrono Trigger, Beyond Oasis and so on. Strangely enough I have yet to play any of the Shining series for more than a few minutes. I actually own several of them for Genesis & Saturn and will be playing through them in a month or so. (I want to play them chronologically, story-wise.) If I decide to attempt manual mapping during Shining in the Darkness, I'll try to remember to share my feelings on that.
Maybe for you it was, or for someone with good direction sense. For me, it would've been incredibly frustrating; the corridors look identical and there are places where you get teleported or spun around -- not to mention hidden things that can be found when you notice where the lacunae on the map are. But sure, it could be done, especially with the map spell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Armoured Priest
Well...to be fair. i didn't say it was easy. Just that it was doable.Quote:
Originally Posted by goldenband
To be honest, the MD/Gen sucks at the RPG genre. It was meant to cater to the action/arcade crowd that SEGA was reknowned for long before their entry into the console market. To seriously believe the system can carry the magnitude of RPGs, let alone quality ones compared to the SNES/SFC, is a joke. Since most Genesis fans are not RPG enthusiasts or have a rather casual interest in the genre, the idea that there are so few in the library and just enough to satiate the casual fans lends them to believe that the Genny did RPGs right because of the extent of their tastes. Overrated as many SquareSoft RPGs are, they are still decent but only ruined because of the hype. Still, counting the translated games, there are plenty of good ones that are underrated on SNES that are just as good if not better. What little I have played of PS4 has not given me a very good premonition and to be fair, I want to just dismiss the hype this game has among SEGA fans so as not to ruin it regardless of what is popular consensus around here. Even if it does turn out to be a favorite, I find it delusional to think that game alone has the magnitude to make every other RPG game seem inferior. No game has ever done that to me, let alone an RPG.
Update on Ys 3. While I did enjoy it more the second time I began playing it, I got carried away and stopped, then quickly forgot about it and sold off my last copy. There's a reason it didn't strike a chord with me the first time, because it isn't that memorable. I don't care for the Ys series in any regard despite having some respect for Falcom's influence on the genre. I hate to say it but I would rather play Super Hydlide or Rings of Power over that shit, despite Ys 3 being more action oriented. This may seem somewhat ironic, as I am generally very fond of ARPGs, hence my love for Crusader of Centy.
PS IV is really overrated around here, but it's a great game (if you haven't reached the battle with Zio you haven't really experienced the game). The biggest issues are the uninformative UI and the lack of interesting gameplay mechanics. It has macros which are awesomely convenient (and secret combo moves to go along with them), but that's not on the same league as the Lufia 2 dungeons, Chrono Trigger combos and set battles, FF6 character specialties and magic system, Treasure of Rudras mantras, or all the RPGs with real-time combat.
If you accept PS IV for what it is, a plain standard JRPG polished to the max, with a great story and setting, you'll enjoy it. If you go expecting interesting mechanics you'll be disappointed.
"Interesting mechanics" aren't really central for me. I mean, my favorite RPGs are the Dragon Quest series, which as the standard-bearer for the JRPG formula, plays the gameplay pretty straight for the most part. I like that kind of gameplay very much, so Phantasy Star IV is lots of fun to me. I liked Phantasy Star II as well, but only when using pre-made maps.
I have to agree that the Genesis does not have a very good RPG library, certainly not compared to the Super Nintendo.
I think Phantasy Star IV is the best game ever. Awesome synth music, fun battles, lots of cool manga style cutscenes, great story which ties the whole series together and many cool characters. I also think the RPG selection on the console is great: Langrisser II, Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, Shining Force II, Beggar Prince, Star Odyssey, Pier Solar, Vixen 357, Warsong, Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star III have all given me countless hours of fun! :)
PS IV has the best major boss battle theme out of any game ever.
I'm admittedly not much of an RPG fan, but I absolutely love the Shining Force games. I guess I just prefer turn-based strategy to random battles and dungeon crawling. Turn-based has a chess-like quality to it that appeals to me.
When it comes to RPGs on the Genesis, it is more about quality than quantity. There aren't that many, but for the most part the ones that are there are quite good (not to say that there aren't any stinkers -- there always will be stinkers in any major console's selection of games in any particular genre).
Don't forget that in the pre-SNES days, it was Sega and the Genesis that the press was lauding as the "King of RPGs." Square really didn't come into the picture until their SNES games came out a couple of years after Sega's big guns (basically Phantasy Star I, II, and just because it still predated the SNES, III, as well as the crazily hyped, but not all that good, Sword of Vermillion) had been released. Even when Square did appear, I still think their RPGs were technically (as in how they used the available technology) a notch below Sega's until Chrono Trigger and Treasure of the Rudras (which I only just heard about a couple of weeks ago on here) came out (I may have missed a couple more here and there, but all the SNES Final Fantasies are included in that "down a notch" category).
I'm just curious, does the MD version of Phantasy Star 1 work on a NA Genesis through a Game Genie? It won't because the console can't access SMS mode while a GG is plugged in, right?
It wouldn't work with a Game Genie, but I'm not sure why it wouldn't work without a Game Genie. It came out well before they started region locking Genesis/MD games. It's "really" an SMS game, but Japanese SMS games weren't software region locked, they just had totally different cartridges.
It's actually a misconception that there are fewer RPGs than casual games on the Genesis. If you count all the RPGs released in all regions (which I assume you would, since you counted the translated SNES ones, and there are quite a few translated MD RPGs), there are actually as many RPGs on the Genesis as there are shooters. Most of what is out there is third party from companies like EA and Treco, whereas most of the SNES games come from Square. I think the fact that the Genesis games are more spread out makes them easy to overlook, but the genre is hardly underrepresented on the console.Quote:
Originally Posted by 5233
Even with only North American English RPG releases, the Genesis was very strong for RPGs, which were infamously unpopular through the 8-bit and 16-bit generation. It was only during the transition to 32-bit gen that the SNES started to get more English RPG releases, as they moved up from painfully unpopular to mildly accepted. The only reason the SNES has nearly as many RPGs as it does, is because Nintendo showed up late to both the 16-bit and 32-bit generations. The SNES/SFC also doesn't have such a big lead in number of RPG'ish games when you stop counting adventure games like Zelda. The biggest factor in Nintendo fans' belief that the SNES is the be-all end-all console for RPGs, is that they are the worst for counting every genre under the sun as "RPG".
I think it depends on whether you count strategy games and action adventures as RPGs ? Do we count JRPGs only, or Western RPGs as well? Only localized games, or fan translated games too? Does Sega CD count ?Quote:
Originally Posted by 5233
All things considered the number of what I would consider "RPG" is pretty comparable on both machines. Even as to regarding the quality of the best games.
MD got a few games before the SNES was even released (Sword of Vermilion, Shining in the Darkness, Rent-A-Hero, Phantasy Star II, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water).
Most SNES RPGs were released late in the SNES' life, i.e. 1995 and later; the dawn of the 32-bit era, and those tend to be the big prominent ones (Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Mario RPG, Metroid, Lufia 2, Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, etc.).
I'd say that people are more familiar with Enix and Square than they are with NexTech (Soleil/Crusader of Centy), KNU (King Colossus), Game Arts (Lunar series), NCS/Masya (Warsong/Langrisser series, Sorcerer's Kingdom, Star Cruiser, Vixen 357) or Hertz (Vay CD). As Melf said, it is why people tend to remember the SNES for its number of RPGs but forget about the MD's RPGs.
And Sega is to blame for that as well. Their focus in the West was on sports, FMV and crappy games based on popular movie/TV licenses.
Nintendo on the other hand did advertise their RPGs right from the SNES' launch, starting with Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Sega did not do anything for Wonderboy in Monsterworld. In fact they did not even localize Monsterworld IV.
Games like Secret of Mana got prime time TV ads over here. I am not sure if they even made a TV ad for Landstalker?
When PlayStation and Saturn launched Nintendo kept their fan base happy with focusing on marketing the big RPGs and action adventures. Sega on the other hand didn't even bother localizing Surging Aura or Hybrid Front. It took them two years to finally release Phantasy Star IV! And all of those Sega CD games were left to Working Designs, more or less two guys in a garage with no marketing budget. And Crusader of Centy was only released in the US thanks to Atlus.
In 1992 Sega had bought and closed Renovation which meant that all those third party RPGs (like Traysia, Warsong, Master of Monsters or Sorcerer's Kingdom) which previously had a (potential) publisher in the US, would never make it (see Star Odyssey, Maten Densetsu, Warsong 2, etc.).
It's almost like they did not want people to play RPGs.
So while people remember the SNES for its excellent RPGs, few people are aware of the fact that games like Beyond Oasis, Snatcher, Shining Force or Monsterworld IV even exist.
Why was that? Were they really not planning on bringing PSIV over, then realized "Oh yeah... We kinda have to, don't we?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Christuserloeser