Originally Posted by Jorpho
Agreed. I merged this with Daria's 2008 thread, as Kamino's 2004 thread was just a tad bit old to bring back. However people can feel free to look there too for inspiration (eep) should they so choose.
Agreed. I merged this with Daria's 2008 thread, as Kamino's 2004 thread was just a tad bit old to bring back. However people can feel free to look there too for inspiration (eep) should they so choose.
Because it makes no attempt to be great, it is therefore extremely great.
Some of My Game Collection Mah Mac n' Cheese Blog
Well that explains the bump. It's funny, I don't even remember posting this thread.
my only complaint is the timing of certain definitions.
Traditional RPG shouldn't apply to Dragon Warrior types. Wizardry/Ultima/M&M/ etc, predate the Japanese RPG and are truly the "traditional RPG" based off of the level of adventure you experience in a D&D session. Even Dragon Quest was influenced heavily by these games.
also technically, Hydlide for Famicom came out before Dragon Quest (march vs may) making it the first console RPG, albeit an "active rpg", heavily influencing the standard that would later influence Zelda, Ys, and an entire mess of action rpgs.
and if we aren't limiting ourselves to consoles, and are counting computers, this predation is even more predominant with even Hydlide 2 predating DQ....
Its possible that this is wrong also and something in Japan predated even Hydlide.
Aetherbyte: PC-Engine and more homebrew
Black Onyx may have come before hydlide.
It was interesting to re-read the old thread.
I recently acquired Pirates! Gold for Genesis, and it got me thinking. Pirates! is often considered an RPG, but it doesn't meet some people's stated criteria: there's no real stats, there is "combat" but not in the normal RPG sense of the term, and it doesn't really have a plot. I'm sure some people do not consider it an RPG (either because of their definition, of independently of any definition).
However, it does have a similar feel to a lot of RPGs. It has an open world, and to get the endgame you have to complete the "Ten Great Quests". In that sense, it's very reminiscent of Ultima IV. And also there are quite a few Western RPGs in which plot takes a major back seat, and the majority of the game is just doing quests of your choosing in an open world. These games are structurally similar to Pirates!. They may have a plot, but it's not integral to the game, and you could make a game like this with no plot and it would play the same (there may be a game like that, and I'm just unaware of it).
(Un)interestingly enough, if you look at the definition I scrapped together on page 1 of this thread, it does fit. It has a player character, NPC's, and player-initiated interaction. It does have a "combat system involving some level of statistics"; actually it has two, with the ship battles and the land battles (not counting the duels). And you do gain "stats" from defeating enemies in a way that makes you stronger against subsequent enemies. I wasn't thinking of Pirates! at all when I wrote that, but now it kind of falls in place.
Yeah black onyx predates Hydlide. Its an interesting game.
Dragon Slayer 1 also predates Hydlide now that I think about it.
Though that game would make Hydlide haters slit their wrists in a bathtub. Its not for the weak.
Aetherbyte: PC-Engine and more homebrew
Haha, but they are RPGs...
Great topic and OP (Daria), I somehow missed it when you first posted it... IDK how that happened. Merge introduction FTW I guess.
Anyway, RPG is a conceptual category. That is all. I liked how Daria tied the RPG concept to it's basis in reality... Most don't have that type of vision of concepts or the required rigor to even try.
Concepts have to be open to reforming when new information or new existents are discovered. Otherwise, it's a broken concept, or at least locked into the past. That's the main problem I can see in classification and categorization. Contentions are mainly in the measurements, but I'm getting ahead of myself...
That said, concepts tied to reality (as any valid one must be) are reduced to their required base elements and units with the actual per-incidence measurements in reality omitted. An element that you pointed out deftly was the decisive vs statistical nature. All RPGs have both, for sure. Even the D&D table games in Vin Diesel's basement.
Decisive is more open to the user/player than statistical outcomes. Though, statistical outcomes are very predictable vs decisive ones. Predictable outcomes have advantages, for one, you can plan and arrange for them easily. People generally like to know what to do or expect to able to do when they get to a certain point. This is just me, but pure or heavy statistic outcomes bore me to tears. I need relative freedom, open choice and the correlative risk to feel well challenged by a game. And that is my actual aim.
I like text and graphical adventures (Text: Zork, Graphic: Uninvited/Shadowgate and Snatcher)... But they are not RPGs. They are wholly decisive (why I like them, a lot). No statistical elements are involved, at least that I know of. I can't think of a case in games where decisiveness is completely eliminated... Decisions = player input. Eliminate that, and you're not dealing with a game at all.
This is why I open my chess games with h4. To eliminate the statistical/known metagame in one move. Chess has been so analyzed that if both players follow mainline theory, games are pretty much predictable. Whole games hinge on a single move, adherent (ok) or not (lose!) to the mainline. They call the h4 openning "Anti-Borg" for a good reason.
Again great topic/debate. I'll have to stew for a bit on this before I post more. Get ready...
Last edited by Icarus Moonsight; 03-04-2010 at 06:07 AM.
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I pretty much stopped caring what the definition of RPG was as I tend to enjoy arguable and borderline games as well. Or other genres of games that have RPG elements.
For example, anyone who likes Final Fantasy usually also likes Zelda. Zelda especially the older titles is hard for anyone not to like at least a little bit. A fan of RPGs who gets to see plenty of sword swinging is attracted to the fact that Link has the same weapon of choice as the characters of games that are clearly RPGs no matter what.
One thing that really attracted me to the genre as a kid was seeing pictures of the in-game world maps, items and weapons in the instruction books and player's guides. In later games where you had multiple characters I was also interested in reading about the various characters.
Even though swords as weapons are the most common idea, there are plenty of others that don't use the usual standard attacks. You have Mario RPG where he jumps on enemies or Pokemon and Sonic Chronicles where you have physical but unarmed fighting.
There's one thing we can probably agree on - RPG fans tend to have a fascination with swords and fighting monsters, whatever the battle system is. Alundra gets praise from fans of RPGs whether it truly is one or not because it has such a detailed story and the monsters and swords that the true RPGs have. Later Zelda games follow suit and get more developed stories as well. They also have likeness to pure RPGs such as Beyond the Beyond, as there are situations where puzzles must be solved to progress.
If certain games are not pure RPGs, they do still have the tendency to have things in common with the usual pure ones.
[quote name='Shidou Mariya' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:05 PM' post='4889940']
I'm a collector, but only to a certain extent.
Not as extreme as Rickstilwell though.[/quote]
I'm not really a sword fetishist, although I do like the heft of a real claymore...
Reason I liked Phantasy Star so much... GUNS!
Oddly, Wild Arms I thought was pretty meh... And gunblades make me sad.
This signature is dedicated to all those
cyberpunks who fight against injustice
and corruption every day of their lives
Play the series again Icarus. One of my favorite series and I really didn't think there was one bad game in the series except Alter Code F which was an extremely watered down version of the original.
My favorite in the series is the thid one which for some reason is the most disliked by people. One of my favorite games altogether actually. Every character could use anything, however, the way the characters were built statistically and how you can equip runes to which characters is which magic and stat increases they get meaning they can be switched around and utilized in many different ways. The storyline is great up to the very end, right before the very last dungeon when the story takes a huge spin, which is like, uhh, what(and not in a good way?) Michiko Naruke delivers amazing music on every single title she works on, but this one is by far the best.
The only problem with Wild ARMs 3 is at the end game there is one ability you can find and equip to any rune(which is something you'd want to give to Clive and drop his ammo down to a single bullet max.) Every turn after the first you could potentially take off level x 1000 damage. I never use this ability whenever I get it.
Last edited by kupomogli; 03-04-2010 at 10:47 AM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
lol. Wild Arms 3 was a step back as far as game play goes. They pulled an ff10 and focused on the shiny colors and forgot to make the game not make people sleepy.
Aetherbyte: PC-Engine and more homebrew
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