What makes a good RPG?
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Metal Man
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A good plot which ties everything together and is full of strange twists seems to rule the other stuff, in my mind.
Super Smash Quest: Fighting evil since 2002.
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Shaman king from the limo
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ralfsmith
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Crazyswordsman
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Needs to have a nice, long 50-60 hour storyline (this means ACTUAL PLAYING TIME. Cutscenes must be minimized. BoFII is a good example) plus lots of optinal sidequests, at least two secret, tough bosses (or, like in FFX, a lot of them), one of those "floor" dungeons (like the Angient Cave in Lufia II), an optional dungeon crawl for each characters ultimate weapon, some secret items that require you to backtrack (and backtracking in the main plot is a MUST). Two secret characters (like in FFVI), EACH character must contribute something important to the story (like in CT or LoD), some badass characters, no more than 12 PCs, no less than 8. There needs to be a badass female and a badass male for each slut or whiny character (such is the case in LoD, which does). The music score also needs to be catchy (like EB, FFs I-IX, and CT)
And no voiceovers except in battles (aka the way LoD did it).
And no voiceovers except in battles (aka the way LoD did it).
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Tritoch
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Gatekeeper
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Plot :: Has to be solid, and develop at a consistent rate throughout the game. What I find weak in a lot of games, is that they have this big climax very late in the game, and more times than not the climax is not all that climatic. Thus, it can make the get-go boring, and a boring set of falling-action. However, keeping the plot consistently building as you go along, that's what seems the best, imo.
Side-quests :: A must! Preferabely side-quests that build on the characters back-story, or give even more depth to the plot. Sure, having side-quests to get your Uber-Mega-Sword is fun enough, but getting some back-story out of the effort seems more worth it. Also! I think it'd be neat if a game would have quests that one could do after you beat the game, something to keep the player wanting to play on, if only to see what these quests would be. (But then, if there were side-quests only available after the final boss was beaten, would that final boss be considered the final boss?)
Battle :: I absolutely hate levelling up, but it's bearable so long as it isn't boring and repetitive in the long run. I like real-time battles that don't switch to another screen (I really enjoyed the Kingdom Hearts battle-system) - it's fast paced, seemingly difficult at first but you get into the swing of it fast enough. When you have a hundred-and something windows to sift through just to get to your Ultimate-Hitpwn of Doom it just wastes time. This is where I think if you're in battle mode, it should be like a fighting game, with button combos, the likes.
Enemies :: Random battles are okay, so long as they aren't every five steps! Enemies should level up as you level up, though - however, enemies in certain areas should only be able to reach a certain limit (to make it so that you don't max your level out way way at the beginning). A variety of enemies is nice, too - seeing the same enemy, only different colours and/or having more claws and fangs, is too monotonous after a while.
Bosses :: Not too easy, like that FFX potato-bug... nor too hard, to where you rip your hair out in just keeping your HP from KO. As far as bosses go, though, I love how Shadows of Colossus did their battles, and it would be interesting to see if and how other games would do that... each boss having a certain key to defeating them, rather than just over level yourself up just to hope in keeping yourself alive. But, random, filler bosses annoy me and they should stay out of games.
Characters :: If you have more than five playable characters that are relevant, it's already got positive points. More than seven is pushing it, less than five seems lacking... though, doing everything by yourself doesn't seem half bad. It's too often that I see characters in games that don't have much depth at all, or stereotypical "happy-go-lucky", "dark, shady", "(@#$ off before I bite you" characteristics. Though, it is inevitable I suppose, so long as they each have their own innovative story.
Bad guy :: Please don't be a pretty boy with an inferiority complex.
Granted, developing a character where you actually get evil vibes from them is quite difficult (and for this, I applaud FFVI). Though, achieving such, the storyline will seem all the more real and believable... and 3D, rather than flat.
Voice Acting :: NO! NO! NO!
... Or find people that can actually read their lines!
Side-quests :: A must! Preferabely side-quests that build on the characters back-story, or give even more depth to the plot. Sure, having side-quests to get your Uber-Mega-Sword is fun enough, but getting some back-story out of the effort seems more worth it. Also! I think it'd be neat if a game would have quests that one could do after you beat the game, something to keep the player wanting to play on, if only to see what these quests would be. (But then, if there were side-quests only available after the final boss was beaten, would that final boss be considered the final boss?)
Battle :: I absolutely hate levelling up, but it's bearable so long as it isn't boring and repetitive in the long run. I like real-time battles that don't switch to another screen (I really enjoyed the Kingdom Hearts battle-system) - it's fast paced, seemingly difficult at first but you get into the swing of it fast enough. When you have a hundred-and something windows to sift through just to get to your Ultimate-Hitpwn of Doom it just wastes time. This is where I think if you're in battle mode, it should be like a fighting game, with button combos, the likes.
Enemies :: Random battles are okay, so long as they aren't every five steps! Enemies should level up as you level up, though - however, enemies in certain areas should only be able to reach a certain limit (to make it so that you don't max your level out way way at the beginning). A variety of enemies is nice, too - seeing the same enemy, only different colours and/or having more claws and fangs, is too monotonous after a while.
Bosses :: Not too easy, like that FFX potato-bug... nor too hard, to where you rip your hair out in just keeping your HP from KO. As far as bosses go, though, I love how Shadows of Colossus did their battles, and it would be interesting to see if and how other games would do that... each boss having a certain key to defeating them, rather than just over level yourself up just to hope in keeping yourself alive. But, random, filler bosses annoy me and they should stay out of games.
Characters :: If you have more than five playable characters that are relevant, it's already got positive points. More than seven is pushing it, less than five seems lacking... though, doing everything by yourself doesn't seem half bad. It's too often that I see characters in games that don't have much depth at all, or stereotypical "happy-go-lucky", "dark, shady", "(@#$ off before I bite you" characteristics. Though, it is inevitable I suppose, so long as they each have their own innovative story.
Bad guy :: Please don't be a pretty boy with an inferiority complex.
Granted, developing a character where you actually get evil vibes from them is quite difficult (and for this, I applaud FFVI). Though, achieving such, the storyline will seem all the more real and believable... and 3D, rather than flat.
Voice Acting :: NO! NO! NO!
... Or find people that can actually read their lines!
<i>\"Why wait for what may never come when you have everything in front of you?\"</i>
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The Willful Wanderer
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I HATE THESE BOARDS RIGHT NOW.
Grr.
Huge ol' post, split it in two, and then IT WANTED ME TO LOG IN OVER AGAIN AND LOST THE FIRST HALF.
Alright, here it is rewritten. Grr.
There are a number of things to keep in mind for making an RPG. Many qualities are important, but some are key. All have value, though.
First off, the system is positively, absolutely unignorible. There are a lot of things that you want to have in your systems of play. The character system, being the base for all the other systems, is most important (I think). You want to have enough statistics to represent the various abilities of a character, but not so many that it can get confusing. You also want to make it fairly intuitive as to what each stat does, so that a player looking at a character sheet or stat or whatever will be able to tell what it means, and what it means compared to the stat(s) of that other character over there. You want the distinctions between the characters to be intuitive as well, to a point- if a character is intended to be a magic user by backstory, plot, and appearance, they'd better have the stats to back it up- nobody's going to spend their time and effort kicking up the spellcasting ability of someone who's already better at something else than they are at spellcasting, if there's another spellcaster they could spend it on.
You also want the battle system to work out. If you're using a face-to-face battle system (Final Fantasy, Legend of Dragoon, Evolution, Skies of Arcadia, Tales of Symphonia), that's already a major choice. Then you have to decide if you want things to be turn-based or real-time. Similarly, if you go for a strategy battle system (Grandia II, Shining Force, Final Fantasy: Tactics, etc.), you have to decide whether you want it to be turn or time based. In a real-time battle, it's absolutely vital for menus to be as small, short, and easy as possible, so that the player doesn't get repeatedly frustrated by being hit and killed while choosing attacks or items. In a turn-based battle, you need to decide what's going to determine the turn order, if that order can change mid-battle, and the like. In that case, small menus aren't as vital, so you can add more options, but you still want to keep it relatively trim. You don't want to put anyone through thirteen menus just so they can use a healing potion, no matter what the case. If you're using a face to face combat system, you need to determine certain other things: what statuses will affect the combat in terms of who can hit what, how abilities will affect one (or multiple) opponents at once, how attack targets will be determined, if you'll even include multi-target attacks, and the like. For a strategy combat system, things can get even more complex- you have to determine ranges and areas of effect of EVERYTHING, from moving to attacking to casting spells to using items to kicking dirt to staring really really hard. Either way, you have to figure out damage scales, the effects of increase in level, both of character/monster and of individual abilities, the effects of terrain, the types of terrain, the size of maps, the shape of the base map unit (squares, most often, but you never know...), the shape of the map, restricted motion areas...
THEN you have one of the most difficult things- magic. A lot of systems have had trouble with making magic worth using. Most difficulties run along one of two lines- either the magic is simply less effective overall, so nobody really uses it, or (and possibly this is worse), the magic functions the exact same way as a normal attack (a problem that the VGF RPG's Inferno engine has- magic attacks are determined by STR and DEF, the same as weapon attacks, so there's no real reason to invest in making a magic-using character instead of a melee combat character- there's no difference in which stats you want, and besides, magic costs you constantly, where weapons only cost you once.) You also want to determine if you'll be using any form of elementalism, where things of one type take particularly high or low injury (or no injury) from attacks/spells/whatnot of a specific type (or several types, depending). You have to balance the magic (rarely done right) in terms of how much each spell costs compared to others, any continuing costs balanced against the costs of weapons to a similar effect level, what each spell does compared to others, what each spell costs compared to non-spell effects and weapons, reach of spells compared to reach of weapons, whether the spell in question can affect targets you don't want it to or not, and so on.
You want to make characters different. The stats of a character focused on melee combat should be significantly different from those of one who uses ranged weapons, and neither of their sets of stats should look like those of a character who uses magic instead. You have to try to provide variety at the same time as balance- if you make a character who's outright worse in the end, even though they've got the same number of 'stat points' assigned, you need to alter the values of the stats until they come out more or less the same level. (The best example of an error on this I know of is in Shining Force II. Luke the Birdman Prince had awful stats all around, and simply wasn't worth keeping as a party character, no matter what. He was supposed to be balanced from having a high agility, but when you go first and still only do half the damage anyone else could, and don't get extra turns or a better dodge chance or anything.... well, it just didn't work.)
Grr.
Huge ol' post, split it in two, and then IT WANTED ME TO LOG IN OVER AGAIN AND LOST THE FIRST HALF.
Alright, here it is rewritten. Grr.
There are a number of things to keep in mind for making an RPG. Many qualities are important, but some are key. All have value, though.
First off, the system is positively, absolutely unignorible. There are a lot of things that you want to have in your systems of play. The character system, being the base for all the other systems, is most important (I think). You want to have enough statistics to represent the various abilities of a character, but not so many that it can get confusing. You also want to make it fairly intuitive as to what each stat does, so that a player looking at a character sheet or stat or whatever will be able to tell what it means, and what it means compared to the stat(s) of that other character over there. You want the distinctions between the characters to be intuitive as well, to a point- if a character is intended to be a magic user by backstory, plot, and appearance, they'd better have the stats to back it up- nobody's going to spend their time and effort kicking up the spellcasting ability of someone who's already better at something else than they are at spellcasting, if there's another spellcaster they could spend it on.
You also want the battle system to work out. If you're using a face-to-face battle system (Final Fantasy, Legend of Dragoon, Evolution, Skies of Arcadia, Tales of Symphonia), that's already a major choice. Then you have to decide if you want things to be turn-based or real-time. Similarly, if you go for a strategy battle system (Grandia II, Shining Force, Final Fantasy: Tactics, etc.), you have to decide whether you want it to be turn or time based. In a real-time battle, it's absolutely vital for menus to be as small, short, and easy as possible, so that the player doesn't get repeatedly frustrated by being hit and killed while choosing attacks or items. In a turn-based battle, you need to decide what's going to determine the turn order, if that order can change mid-battle, and the like. In that case, small menus aren't as vital, so you can add more options, but you still want to keep it relatively trim. You don't want to put anyone through thirteen menus just so they can use a healing potion, no matter what the case. If you're using a face to face combat system, you need to determine certain other things: what statuses will affect the combat in terms of who can hit what, how abilities will affect one (or multiple) opponents at once, how attack targets will be determined, if you'll even include multi-target attacks, and the like. For a strategy combat system, things can get even more complex- you have to determine ranges and areas of effect of EVERYTHING, from moving to attacking to casting spells to using items to kicking dirt to staring really really hard. Either way, you have to figure out damage scales, the effects of increase in level, both of character/monster and of individual abilities, the effects of terrain, the types of terrain, the size of maps, the shape of the base map unit (squares, most often, but you never know...), the shape of the map, restricted motion areas...
THEN you have one of the most difficult things- magic. A lot of systems have had trouble with making magic worth using. Most difficulties run along one of two lines- either the magic is simply less effective overall, so nobody really uses it, or (and possibly this is worse), the magic functions the exact same way as a normal attack (a problem that the VGF RPG's Inferno engine has- magic attacks are determined by STR and DEF, the same as weapon attacks, so there's no real reason to invest in making a magic-using character instead of a melee combat character- there's no difference in which stats you want, and besides, magic costs you constantly, where weapons only cost you once.) You also want to determine if you'll be using any form of elementalism, where things of one type take particularly high or low injury (or no injury) from attacks/spells/whatnot of a specific type (or several types, depending). You have to balance the magic (rarely done right) in terms of how much each spell costs compared to others, any continuing costs balanced against the costs of weapons to a similar effect level, what each spell does compared to others, what each spell costs compared to non-spell effects and weapons, reach of spells compared to reach of weapons, whether the spell in question can affect targets you don't want it to or not, and so on.
You want to make characters different. The stats of a character focused on melee combat should be significantly different from those of one who uses ranged weapons, and neither of their sets of stats should look like those of a character who uses magic instead. You have to try to provide variety at the same time as balance- if you make a character who's outright worse in the end, even though they've got the same number of 'stat points' assigned, you need to alter the values of the stats until they come out more or less the same level. (The best example of an error on this I know of is in Shining Force II. Luke the Birdman Prince had awful stats all around, and simply wasn't worth keeping as a party character, no matter what. He was supposed to be balanced from having a high agility, but when you go first and still only do half the damage anyone else could, and don't get extra turns or a better dodge chance or anything.... well, it just didn't work.)
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
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The Willful Wanderer
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- Location: Aisle 12, between the kumquats and the radicchio.
One important thing that a lot of RPG makers overlook is the essence of the RPG: customization. You want to allow your players elbow room to customize the characters they're using (or, in the case of a strategy-combat RPG, the team they use, or even both characters and team), but you don't want to make it so they never leave the character generator, or can customize a character right out of the space in the plotline that you've holed them into. Give freedom to play around with, but not freedom to put themself in a position to complain that they've been mislead about how much they can twiddle with things.
It's also vital to ensure that all the options you give, be they in terms of plot direction, fighting style, character customization, item use, or anything else, are all equally viable in their own ways. Large numbers of RPGs have significant characters in them that, quite simply, NOBODY EVER USES. (For instance, Oracles in FF:T. I have never heard of anyone using an Oracle other than to qualify for another class in that game. Or, in Shining Force II, Luke the Birdman prince. Overall and specifically, he sucked categorically in every way. Or, in Pokemon, Dunsparce and Yanma. And the list goes on.) You don't want that. What it says is that you've produced content that either simply isn't viable, or that nobody enjoys- which defeats the purpose of the flexibility in the game of providing options.
In terms of the plot, try not to pull WTF moments on your players- that is, WTF moments of 'this is really just WRONG'. For an example, you can look at the end of Shining Force II, where it's claimed that the hero, Bowie, is the true love of the Princess of Granseal, with whom he has exchanged, over the course of several years, about five or six sentences, and the girl in the party who loves him, Sarah, basically gets dumped on the tertiary character of Kazin. And 85% of the people playing the game said 'WTF?!?!? This is screwed up!'. The other 15% didn't care either way, so.... yeah.
Throw in hidden and secret stuff. If someone is playing an RPG, chances are, they'll be trying to find new and different ways of doing things in that RPG. So let them. Reward it with hidden options, new routes, secret items, etc. Some of these should be more powerful than the normal ones, and with good cause- the player had to go out of their way to acquire the thing, and there's only the one or two of it in the game.
Provide a wide variety of things to fight. Don't make 1/3 of the monsters the same thing with different stats and different colors. It's fairly easy to edit sprites (if that's what you're using), even if you can't create them in the first place, and there are so DAMN MANY sprites out there on the Web from various games through the ages, that you can probably find or only slightly edit sprites and come up with damn near anything. Even if it only previously existed in your mind.
Try not to steal from other people's mythologies. Borrowing part of an idea is good, but people in general seem to be a bit tired of the FF method of picking random deities from various real-world faiths and using them for the summon spells. Try something interesting and original. If you can come up with original classes, weapons, items, deities, names, et cetera (that aren't just silly and there for a laugh), people will appreciate the creativity all the more, and it'll make the game-world seem more real.
Character consistency is very important, as are interesting character personalities. Squall is not an interesting character personality. Ryu hasn't been an interesting character personality for a while now, and neither has Goku. Amnesia is overdone. So on and so forth. Do interesting things. Have a dwarf who's a cheerful drunk (and alcoholic). Make the main character a woman who's not wearing a chainmail bikini (THE CHAFING!!!!). Make the main character's weapon something OTHER than a huge sword or a gun. Polearms are underused. Axes are underused. 'fist' weapons are underused. Maces are underused. Staves are underused or used wrong more often than not. Crossbows and bows are AMAZINGLY underused. Hammers are underused. Make the character not very charismatic for some reason OTHER than surliness. If the main character's a man, don't have half the party be women who see him as a relationship interest. If the main character's a woman, PLEASE don't make her the ubersexy unattainable purity girl or the slutty casual scumball. Have people in the party who don't get along on a serious level. Have people in the party who ignore each other outright. Have people in the party, instead of just faces with one personality quirk each. Have original characters (Zell: I'm Tifa without boobs!) with original character interactions. (Zell aside, FF8 is actually a fairly good example of fresh character interactions, though not neccessarily fresh ideas (they ALL have amnesia?!)- Quistis' 'Treppies', for instance, help to magnify her 'cool parent' personality.)
For music, try to use actual musical pieces. People stopped getting away with 15-second music loops in RPGs when consoles hit 64 bits, and they could afford to spare the data for it. One way to handle this is to simply skip the music altogether- if it's a computer game, chances are whoever's playing already has music they like to listen to, and can play it while they play the game without too much difficulty. It's not rocket science while riding a unicycle, yes?
Anyways, that's pretty much all of the stuff I think is most important to making a really good RPG. And now I've finally actually posted it. Heh.
Go fig.
It's also vital to ensure that all the options you give, be they in terms of plot direction, fighting style, character customization, item use, or anything else, are all equally viable in their own ways. Large numbers of RPGs have significant characters in them that, quite simply, NOBODY EVER USES. (For instance, Oracles in FF:T. I have never heard of anyone using an Oracle other than to qualify for another class in that game. Or, in Shining Force II, Luke the Birdman prince. Overall and specifically, he sucked categorically in every way. Or, in Pokemon, Dunsparce and Yanma. And the list goes on.) You don't want that. What it says is that you've produced content that either simply isn't viable, or that nobody enjoys- which defeats the purpose of the flexibility in the game of providing options.
In terms of the plot, try not to pull WTF moments on your players- that is, WTF moments of 'this is really just WRONG'. For an example, you can look at the end of Shining Force II, where it's claimed that the hero, Bowie, is the true love of the Princess of Granseal, with whom he has exchanged, over the course of several years, about five or six sentences, and the girl in the party who loves him, Sarah, basically gets dumped on the tertiary character of Kazin. And 85% of the people playing the game said 'WTF?!?!? This is screwed up!'. The other 15% didn't care either way, so.... yeah.
Throw in hidden and secret stuff. If someone is playing an RPG, chances are, they'll be trying to find new and different ways of doing things in that RPG. So let them. Reward it with hidden options, new routes, secret items, etc. Some of these should be more powerful than the normal ones, and with good cause- the player had to go out of their way to acquire the thing, and there's only the one or two of it in the game.
Provide a wide variety of things to fight. Don't make 1/3 of the monsters the same thing with different stats and different colors. It's fairly easy to edit sprites (if that's what you're using), even if you can't create them in the first place, and there are so DAMN MANY sprites out there on the Web from various games through the ages, that you can probably find or only slightly edit sprites and come up with damn near anything. Even if it only previously existed in your mind.
Try not to steal from other people's mythologies. Borrowing part of an idea is good, but people in general seem to be a bit tired of the FF method of picking random deities from various real-world faiths and using them for the summon spells. Try something interesting and original. If you can come up with original classes, weapons, items, deities, names, et cetera (that aren't just silly and there for a laugh), people will appreciate the creativity all the more, and it'll make the game-world seem more real.
Character consistency is very important, as are interesting character personalities. Squall is not an interesting character personality. Ryu hasn't been an interesting character personality for a while now, and neither has Goku. Amnesia is overdone. So on and so forth. Do interesting things. Have a dwarf who's a cheerful drunk (and alcoholic). Make the main character a woman who's not wearing a chainmail bikini (THE CHAFING!!!!). Make the main character's weapon something OTHER than a huge sword or a gun. Polearms are underused. Axes are underused. 'fist' weapons are underused. Maces are underused. Staves are underused or used wrong more often than not. Crossbows and bows are AMAZINGLY underused. Hammers are underused. Make the character not very charismatic for some reason OTHER than surliness. If the main character's a man, don't have half the party be women who see him as a relationship interest. If the main character's a woman, PLEASE don't make her the ubersexy unattainable purity girl or the slutty casual scumball. Have people in the party who don't get along on a serious level. Have people in the party who ignore each other outright. Have people in the party, instead of just faces with one personality quirk each. Have original characters (Zell: I'm Tifa without boobs!) with original character interactions. (Zell aside, FF8 is actually a fairly good example of fresh character interactions, though not neccessarily fresh ideas (they ALL have amnesia?!)- Quistis' 'Treppies', for instance, help to magnify her 'cool parent' personality.)
For music, try to use actual musical pieces. People stopped getting away with 15-second music loops in RPGs when consoles hit 64 bits, and they could afford to spare the data for it. One way to handle this is to simply skip the music altogether- if it's a computer game, chances are whoever's playing already has music they like to listen to, and can play it while they play the game without too much difficulty. It's not rocket science while riding a unicycle, yes?
Anyways, that's pretty much all of the stuff I think is most important to making a really good RPG. And now I've finally actually posted it. Heh.
Go fig.
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin
\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"
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Crazyswordsman
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I beg to differ, Auron. When there's unnatural pauses in the dialogue or between lines, that's not good voice acting, Auron. When Tidus is acting all girly and whiny in battles, that's not good voice acting. When the voice actors sound like they don't care (and that's what they sounded like), that's not good voice acting. When voice acting drags out scenes, that's a waste of time. When you can't skip these scenes, you get pissed. And you join Jay's army of "Why doesn't Square learn from their past mistakes?"
Voice acting turns RPGs into anime. I don't want to see that happen. EVER. LoD was a major exception since all the voice acting was done in battle, and the characters were actually cool. Not like the non-Auron and Wakka FFX ones. -CSM
Voice acting turns RPGs into anime. I don't want to see that happen. EVER. LoD was a major exception since all the voice acting was done in battle, and the characters were actually cool. Not like the non-Auron and Wakka FFX ones. -CSM
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Crazyswordsman
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It got mixed reviews. The FFVII hippies loved it, but most of the people I associate with hated it. I tend to be very critical of voice acting, especially in a series such as Final Fantasy. What I liked to do was make up funny voices for the characters, and I have done so with many of the characters, especially in the earlier games such as FFIV and FFVI. FFX took that freedom away from me. -CSM
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Kibbleking
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There's alot of things which make a good rpg. Of course, there are more factors that make it a bad one...repetitiveness for one...an enjoyable game is original, especially plotwise. When you can predict the ending in the first hour of gameplay, thats a bad sign. The characters have to be original and interesting, not the same steryotypical models.
I like games where you are given choices that actually affect the course of the game, giving you replay value and the option the move the game's progress as you please. Also, the option to customize for yourself a party with your favourite characters and not have it come back to bite you in the ass, ie you level up your party and it turns out that so and so character is actually needed for the final boss battle.
Side bosses and secret characters are good, especially if your reward is backstory or a quality cut-scene. The challenge is good, but I prefer to play these sorts of games for their storyline.
And a good soundtrack! If the 'walking through fields' track is only a few minutes long, and to be repeated endlessly for the game, I'd be tempted to turn it off then and there. I find alot of voice overs can be irritating, but this is most often the cause of irritating heroes and the goody goody heroines. However, if the voiceover annoys you, most games have subtitles that enable you to mute the game. I think that voiceovers shouldn't be boycotted completely, otherwise they will have no way of improving themselves.
And please, can we have an rpg that doesn't have the main character waking up late for school?
I like games where you are given choices that actually affect the course of the game, giving you replay value and the option the move the game's progress as you please. Also, the option to customize for yourself a party with your favourite characters and not have it come back to bite you in the ass, ie you level up your party and it turns out that so and so character is actually needed for the final boss battle.
Side bosses and secret characters are good, especially if your reward is backstory or a quality cut-scene. The challenge is good, but I prefer to play these sorts of games for their storyline.
And a good soundtrack! If the 'walking through fields' track is only a few minutes long, and to be repeated endlessly for the game, I'd be tempted to turn it off then and there. I find alot of voice overs can be irritating, but this is most often the cause of irritating heroes and the goody goody heroines. However, if the voiceover annoys you, most games have subtitles that enable you to mute the game. I think that voiceovers shouldn't be boycotted completely, otherwise they will have no way of improving themselves.
And please, can we have an rpg that doesn't have the main character waking up late for school?
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Crazyswordsman
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