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[s0]

oooh ok, nvm what i said then 

[gimymblert]

The way you talk about the genre remind me in my youth (shed a tears), I like zelda so I jump on secret of mana which is an hybrid, then my first "true rpg" was mystic quest which is like baby rpg, no random encounter though, enemy are static sprite on the map (which is great, the sprite give you a rough idea of the enemy party) and block passages (so you can actually think ahead how to plot a path about which enemy to engage), the map have battle point you can engage and exhaust battle too.

It opened me slowly to the genre convention

[s0]

gimmy, did you enjoy gen 1 pokemon when it first came out?

i was always drawn to rpgs because they were so rare on the nintendo systems i grew up with (im in europe, none of squaresoft's classic snes games except secret of mana came out here). i just imagined them to be these ULTIMATE AWESOME GAMES that would allow you to ENTER ANOTHER WORLD. also im terrible at action gams so it sucked being stuck with a ton of platformers i wasn't good at.

[gimymblert]

We played the game before it was big on usa (the eu since I'm eu, and even japan ibn fact since the anime was the catalyst) and was just a small side "paragraph" that caught my attention in a magazine, and we jump with some friend on emulator (god bless no$gb). It blew my mind on several level at the time and watching the craze and the sustain success still amaze me. I was already a rpg fan back then. I was maybe 16?

[Lares Yamoir]

What breaks a RPG for me?
If it' generic. Be it in the art, the setting or the mechanics...Although that would apply to any game really.
I especially dislike long RPGs, that boast with their 100+ hours of gameplay. I don't have time to play a game that long and most of the time it feels really underwhelming.

What makes a RPG?
Well basically the complete opposite. To give an example, I really liked Dark Souls. The game isn't that long, although you can spent quite a bit of time with it. But here it really is completly optional, while in other games you need to do siedequests, because the devs expect it from you. The setting in Dark Souls was also kind of unique at that time and I like dark stories anyway.
I would like to see more alternative level systems in RPGs. This includes how stats of the character affect the game. So if a game tries something along those lines, it at least gets my attention.

[Kayzaks]

I especially dislike long RPGs, that boast with their 100+ hours of gameplay. I don't have time to play a game that long and most of the time it feels really underwhelming.

I can relate to that. Really long RPGs often give me the feeling that everything inbetween is just "filler material".

[Pfotegeist]

I especially dislike long RPGs, that boast with their 100+ hours of gameplay. I don't have time to play a game that long and most of the time it feels really underwhelming.

I can relate to that. Really long RPGs often give me the feeling that everything inbetween is just "filler material".

I imagine there could be a good application of the 100 hour game timespan. If there were 20 minutes worth of new restful gameplay for every hour of new action, for example. If someone wanted to experiment with grinding mechanics more they could implement challenging daily puzzles as alternatives to the mindless grind.

[oahda]

UNDERTALE SPOILERS KEEP OUT

oooh ok, nvm what i said then  

OK, "done". And so done. Can't say I liked it.

As far as I'm concerned the game didn't offer an option in the end. You can't sacrifice yourself as that means game over and you just have to "try again". You can't walk away and live amongst the monsters forever without fighting even tho several characters throughout the game suggested it. So after having stopped caring about the game and googling what to do, we did seem to get presented with an option after all (but only after having broken the pacifist rule anyway so the game was already over for me — now I was just doing it to see what would happen, with no attachment left at all).

But after having chosen mercy there and actually starting to get an OK ending the game just laughed us in the face and turned itself off — so no real choice there either. And completely broke anything the game might have built up to at that point even more because it was pretty much a big-lipped alligator moment which made no sense at all and completely ripped you out of immersion (quite literally, considering it seriously turned the game off — completely disconnected without any desire to boot up the game again after that).

While some further googling does seem to reveal that a preferable ending should be possible, it doesn't really count if you have to find out online what obscure stuff you need to do to get it.

Besides this non-choice no choice had to be made at all (didn't have to hurt anyone) until then, so I don't really see what profoundness there is to it. There isn't any. And whatever serious and deep tension they tried their hands at in the end gets pretty meaningless when the rest of the game is so annoying and unserious. It felt like the embodiment of Tumblr. It was difficult to care very much at the end after that. When I said the dialogue was great I had only really met the skeleton brothers and in retrospect they were also the only characters I actually liked.

Even my girlfriend, who said yesterday after having played a bit more than half the game that she loved it, just went "OK..?" after the game had turned itself off on us and seemed not to care much after that, and she too got really annoyed with Alphys eventually. I don't know who finds the constant statuses and ringing funny but we didn't.

Wouldn't play again. Wouldn't recommend. It was okay, no more. Music is great, but that goes for most games and movies.

UNDERTALE SPOILERS KEEP OUT

[Alevice]

You can't walk away and live amongst the monsters forever without fighting even tho several characters throughout the game suggested it.

Yes you can

But after having chosen mercy there and actually starting to get an OK ending the game just laughed us in the face and turned itself off — so no real choice there either.

First pacifist/neutral run always goes like that, and there is more to it. Game shutting itself off is just a 4thwall breaking aspect of the last boss in the neutral path. The game continues when you reopen.

While some further googling does seem to reveal that a preferable ending should be possible, it doesn't really count if you have to find out online what obscure stuff you need to do to get it.

Finish the game once and go full pacifist  on your second playthrough and befriend everybody (basically, if they invite you to their house, make sure you do and keep following what your friend monsters ask you). Voila, pacifist ending!

[Jordgubben]

...
then my first "true rpg" was mystic quest which is like baby rpg, no random encounter though, enemy are static sprite on the map (which is great, the sprite give you a rough idea of the enemy party) and block passages (so you can actually think ahead how to plot a path about which enemy to engage)
...

That's actually quite brilliant. Why won't more JRPG do it like that. "Riviera - The promised land" is the only other JRPG I can think of that does something like that (on more or less all battles).

[Schoq]

Chrono Trigger?

[s0]

for the record i didnt really like the "tumblrish" writing and humor in undertale either. its probably why i "merely" liked it but am not super excited about it (tho i have a lot of respect for what it does for narrative choices in games).

but welp thats just personal preference.

anyway the game definitely does mix in serious themes with its zany humor. some people claim its a game that "tricks" you into thinking its lighthearted but is actually serious, but i think it's more correct to say that it's both at the same time. it's like how majora's mask is goofy and cartoonish, but also deals with themes of loss and grief.

[eliasfrost]

What makes a good RPG for me is giving me room to roleplay a character (I mean it's in the name). Giving every quest different solutions depending on who you are and let the player think "what would my character do in this situation?" and the game letting the player solve it in whatever way she wants based on the underlying mechanics and systems. Fallout is still my favourite RPG series. Especially the early ones where every quest had three ways of solving it: combat, stealth and speech, sometimes a combination between the three (and in some rare cases only two *shrug*) but you always had more than one way of doing things. The games had a very nuanced approach to conflict that I really like but don't see too often these days.

What breaks an RPG is the opposite, if I can't roleplay it's not an RPG to me. I think that's why I really dislike japanese RPGs because they rarely give the player more than one option. Unless it's about different ways of killing things but then, so does Fallout.

[gimymblert]

But is it role play or is it self insertion?

[s0]

whats the difference?

[eliasfrost]

But is it role play or is it self insertion?

Depends, when I roleplay in Fallout I make decisions based on my character and her pre-defined personality, I rarely make desicions "on my own" but then I made the character so the line is pretty blurry. Other games like Morrowind where player expression is more important I tend to self insert rather than try to characterize the player avatar. Mainly because it's harder to roleplay in those games unless you make up rules or restrict certain mechanics artificially and that's not particularly elegant I feel.

[battlerager]

Yeah I also try to make decisions that would fit what I imagine my character to be like over picking what I like best. I don't think that's 'self insertion'.

[s0]

i think every sort of character building mechanic in a game is already roleplaying tbh. a simple form of it maybe but still. imo it has nothing to do with combat or linearity.

i mean, take diablo for instance: diablo is a game that consists of hacking up monsters and collecting loot. so your character's role is narrowly predefined as someone who fights and kills monsters. however, you still get to choose the most of the specifics of how you fill out that role. are you a necromancer or a barbarian? do you use dual axes or dual swords? what skills do you use? i.e. what style of fighting does your character specialize in?

[oahda]

Too late, Alevice. The game made me not want to start it again, and I shouldn't have to find out online that's "what I have to do". Plus I still had to break the rule to get there, so there's no point now. I'm done. No need to try and convince me.

it's like how majora's mask is goofy and cartoonish, but also deals with themes of loss and grief.

In a way, but I've always felt it did it in a much different way...

For one, it doesn't change the way texts are written to match certain ways of writing online, which makes no sense, since the characters are still talking — merely representing different dialects would have at least made sense, but I'm personally not a fan of that either, as I like to imagine those myself if there is no spoken audio (like in books or many games).

And it's proper, thought through humour; not just randomness and memes. Which the skeleton brothers sort of had going for them at the beginning of Undertale, but after that it just became a trainwreck. And it's definitely not all over the place in Majora's Mask. It pops up sometimes, and often as some sort of device to relieve previous tension, and not just to be there "for fun".

But even MM has some really weird stuff that I wish wasn't there, because it's bizarre to the point of more or less ruining a moment, like putting the princess in a bottle, or Mikau's embarrassing performance as he dies.

[s0]

yeh but that randomness and memes is what tumblr culture finds funny. like i said, i didnt enjoy that aspect of it either, but it's good for people who like that sort of humor. it's just Not For Me (or you, apparently) because we aren't part of that subculture.

and i didnt mean that MM constantly throws jokes at you, but that it's often goofy in tone. i mean the entirety of clocktown is basically a collection of odd and eccentric characters. also the game has tingle in it