/vr/ - Retro Games

I feel similarly, I fucking hate turn based combat. Its a shame because I love, in JRPGs, the great plots, worlds, swelling music, lots of lore and towns but I just hate what seems to take up the most time, which is the combat and random encounters.

>>1488427
>turn based combat
i think its this that really disinterests me from rpgs. it slows down the action of the game and it feels too wordy with all the menus that constantly pop up in battle

If Super Mario RPG, Paper mario or one of the Tales of games can't turn you over you're screwed
closest you'll probably come to enjoying something is WRPGs

Why not play an RPG with real-time combat?

OP are you me? I feel the same.
Platformers and fighting games are what I like the most. The only RPG I enjoyed was Pokemon Firered, and only because I grew with the franchise, not exactly for the quality of the game.
Same for FPS games. The only thing I enjoyed was Time Splitters 2 and only because it was a fun multiplayer.

>>1488446
Oh that's right, I did play paper mario and enjoyed it. maybe i will give super mario RPG a shot

What does this thread have to do specifically with retro-gaming?

>>1488415
I've been there before, though I also played Pokemon, Mario RPGs, and Tales games when I was younger, so I can't say that I'm quite so similar. I'd recommend trying those fringe games (the ones that are almost action games) and then slowly branching out. I also recommend Mother 3 as a game to get you to appreciate storytelling in video games.

>>1488469
>a lot of retro games are RPGs
>OP is looking for a good RPG to get into

>>1488469
Get this, man. There are RPGs that are also retro.

But fucking seriously, if he's posting this here then it goes without saying that he's talking about retro RPGs.

Sounds like you played the wrong JRPGs.

>>1488445
examples?

>>1488464
I recommend also playing Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. Really good for the action button-pressing RPG.

I felt like this until I played Dragon Quest games. Lots of people go on about how it's dated and grindy and boring, but for me the combat actually feels like a necessary part of the game, and so does leveling. It's also fast and to-the-point without some bullshit PS1-era cutscenes of your wizard casting a spell for half a minute.

Don't force yourself to play something you don't enjoy even if you really want to. All you're doing is wasting your time.

>>1488438

Turn-based combat is the only way a game is ever going to simulate combat of any kind realistically. Which isn't a priority to everyone but it is to me.

But why exactly do you think I should care, OP?

>>1488485

I don't really consider RPGs without turn-based combat to be RPGs, but there are many. The Baldur's Gate games, Planescape:Torment, Neverwinter Nights, any of the Elder Scrolls games, etc.

>>1488489

>this

Love my Dragon Quest, too bad Square/Enix are fucking it up.

>>1488496
you posted in this thread so there is a part of you that cares
otherwise you would have just ignored it

BTW, you have tried Super Mario RPG and/or the Paper Mario games, I assume?

Not everyone is into turn-based stuff. Luckily there are various real-time RPGs.

Try Secret of Mana, you're bound to get charmed.

>>1488506
How else are they fucking it up? I mean, besides refusal to release some titles outside of Japan.

>>1488415
I both love and hate RPGs. The stories are almost universally terrible and are a struggle to get through, but the fun of designing my own characters (in what games allow it) or just watching them grow in general is the main draw for me. It's the only genre I feel like I can see the progress made in a quantifiable manner.

It would be epic if there was RPG with combat like from Sonic 2. *Sigh* A man can dream...

>>1488526
How the hell would that even work?

>>1488496
I'm not sure if I understand this. How is turn based combat realistic? I mean, it intuitively feels to me that the opposite of that should be true.

>>1488485
I feel obligated to plug The World Ends With You here, but I'm not sure if it's retro. 2007, according to Wikipedia. That was seven years ago.

>>1488534
gotta level fast

>>1488534
Basically after every encounter you are spawned into a Sonic 2 level, but instead of Sonic enemies it would the enemies from the RPG you are playing. Higher level enemies would play like Dr. Robotnick boss levels.

>>1488538
not the guy you responded to but you can abstract out a lot with turn based

>>1488496

>turn based combat
>realistic

are you serious. its the most unrealistic type of combat there is. a game like zelda 2 is way more realistic than any turn based combat. realistic is games like dark souls which feel intense, heat of battle, when shit gets real. turn based is polite and just navigating menus

>>1488548
what the fuck

this board is retarded

>>1488526
>>1488540
Actually, HAS Sega ever made an RPG with the Sonic franchise? I'm not that familiar with it so I wouldn't really know.

>>1488496
>>1488548
> Video games
> realistic

If I wanted realistic combat, I'd go to a bar and pick a fight.

>>1488538

Because a game is an abstraction, a world into which the player of essence has very limited input. You can't, for instance, accurately simulate a sword-fight in any kind of real-time setting. It's just impossible to map out the intricacies. In a turn-based framework, the combatant's skills determine the outcome of a fight, with various modifiers, which gets far closer to how things work in real life. You can also better simulate things like taking cover, providing supportive fire, and levels of suppression in a modern context.

If you're going for accurate simulation, turn-based combat is pretty much the only way to go. The game Operation Flashpoint was a pretty accurate infantry combat simulator, but it still doesn't approach what you can do in, say, a really in-depth turn-based tabletop game. The same is true in computer or video games.

>>1488552

explain

>>1488554

its not about being utterly realistic but simulating the feeling of rush, intense combat. turn based combat has practically no urgency. if you die you can always just grind or shop.

>>1488551
Yeah, I hear it was average. Called Sonic Chronicles, it was on DS and made by Bioware. I can only say that the music is piss-awful.

>>1488560
Action RPGs don't have urgency either

>>1488548

Dark Souls is about reflexes and learning to exploit patterns. It's very good and very precise for a game, but it comes nowhere close to accurately simulating actual combat.

>>1488560

>just grind or shop

Mind you I'm not arguing that JRPGs are an example of what I'm talking about. A well-paced RPG wouldn't allow grinding and would demand precise strategy.

>>1488562

which is why RPGs in general tend to suck

>>1488564
>Games need urgency to be fun

lol

>>1488572

they dont, but combat in RPGS is so bad it tends to overshadow anything else

>>1488575
>but combat in RPGS is so bad

Your opinion.

>>1488572
>Games need urgency to be fun
yes, actually many gamers would agree with this.
people find scrolling through menus to get boring after a while

>>1488579
>people find scrolling through menus to get boring after a while

Is that why turn-based RPGs, both western and eastern, have been popular?

>>1488538
I think the key thing to remember with turn-based combat in typical RPGs is that the characters are not just standing in line across from each other, taking turns to hit each other.

This is just organisation to make it clear whose turn it is, though this changed over time when games introduced silly eye candy spell effects and animations.

The best way to play an RPG, in my opinion, is to turn off animation where possible and use the flavour text to guide your imagination. Take the portraits onscreen as an abstract representation of which character is being described currently.

Taking all visuals in an RPG as an abstract representation of the world and the immediate surroundings- towns and the wilderness probably aren't really a grid where people must walk in straight lines.

>>1488585

Relax, man. People like different things. I'll defend the tremendous worth of turn-based combat all day, but some people just can't get into it.

>>1488585
some enjoy them, some don't.
it doesn't mean that because some people finding RPG menus boring that others wont enjoy them and buy them

>>1488415
Same reason here, turn based combat is a drag. Although, I am recently falling in love with the 'action rpg' games, where free movement and fighting is concerned. That said, I don't know too many. Could anybody recommend me some good ones?

>>1488561
Never played Dark Souls, but isn't that exactly what actual combat is about? You are trying to win in combat, you aren't going to stand and wait for their turn, you fight dirty and fuck the person up.

video games are like sports:
>RPGs = chess
>Action games = football

>>1488557
I see what you mean. More bandwidth for the player to give orders to the character, as it were.

Still, I don't think I've played a lot of turn-based games that actually made any effort to realistically simulate a sword-fight. The only one I can think of is Dwarf Fortress, and that just raises further questions about what realism even means in this context. The best sword-fighting controls I've used were probably in Zelda: Skyward Sword, and that wasn't really "realistic" as much as "a nice gimmick". Does realism imply a better mapping between the game and the real world in the actions you can take to influence a fight, or in the outcome of the fight? If the only move available to the player is to attack, with the game carefully simulating every severed tendon in the background and saving the location and general shape of the injury to display scars later on, is that more or less realistic than the player being able to pick his strategy from ten levels of nested submenus while the game just counts abstract hit points, arbitrarily declaring the opponent dead when his hit zero?

>>1488578

no shit dumbass

>>1488605

Real combat can be about that, but it depends on a lot of different factors. Dark Souls still comes nowhere close.

>>1488615

That's stupid. In most cases, combat that requires movement and facility with the controller is far more intellectual than turn based combat. Turn based combat is almost never as strategic as chess, they are completely different.

Games like Zelda 2 or Dark Souls have far more intellectual combat than most JRPGs. Its pretty embarrassing when intelligence and facility with the controller are considered mutually exclusive

>>1488628

Reflexes don't equal intellect or strategy. Although I'm not happy with the false equivalency you're replying to either.

Play Diablo. Or M&M6-8.

>>1488582
But if I need to use the power of my IMAGINATION to make combat realistic, is there any reason I couldn't do that in a real-time game? Well, other than not having time to imagine things because I'm too busy not dying. Something like the real-time-with-pause fighting in Baldur's Gate can definitely give that.

>>1488628
>Games like Zelda 2 or Dark Souls have far more intellectual combat than most JRPGs.

holy mother of lol

Stop being pretentious about Zelda and Dark Souls. The combat found in either of those games are not particularly deep.

>>1488647

>real-time-with-pause fighting

Although I'm the passionate defender of turn-based combat from above, I'm in favor of something like this. I still believe in a turn structure, possibly of five or six seconds per turn, with a 'timeline' that you populate with actions similar to an editing program. The protagonists and the enemies would then take actions simultaneously, with small adjustments for differing reflex abilities.

>>1488657

I love turn-based combat and both of those games.

Generally I agree with you though.

>>1488415
Try symphony of the night (bare minimum rpg elements if any) or a game where the random encounter is an action secuence (like zelda 2 or tales of phantasia)

>>1488657

I love turn-based combat and both of those games.

Generally I agree with you though.

>>1488662

With interrupts as needed. Forgot to mention that.

>>1488647
>>1488662
Reminds me of Chrono Trigger. You initiate a fight while selecting moves from a window, but other enemies can fight you regardless of if you select anything or not. Time sensitive I guess you could say, although you need to wait a certain time period before you can attack again.

>>1488671

Sort of. I'm picturing something much more complex than Chrono Trigger, with time completely stopping during the planning phase, but yeah basically.

>>1488665
Hey, don't get me wrong, they're both well made games.

But when you have people like that guy up their trying to play up both titles as if they're hyper-deep experiences that only people of intellect can enjoy, I have to step in an say something.

The games aren't all that deep. And this isn't an insult to quality--just bringing attention to the fact that it's not exactly a game of Chess going on.

>>1488675

They're deep in their own ways. You have to learn and meticulously practice strategies for fighting every enemy. Which again, isn't a simulation of actual combat by enemy means, but it's its own sort of depth.

>>1488632
>Reflexes don't equal intellect or strategy

Maybe not on their own. But a game like Zelda 2 is about mastering the gamespace, playing well under duress, moving around and avoiding enemy attacks. It's intellectual because it requires you to think fast and spatially. This applies to Zelda 1 as well.

Also, the turn based fighting in many RPGs honestly isnt very intellectual or strategic. In many ways its just a war of attrition.

Why is something considered more intellectual if its safer, less intense, manageable? They really dont demand anything out of you in my opinion. The chess comparison is completely invalid in my opinion, turn based fighting is really nothing like chess.

>>1488675

he didnt say only people with intellect could enjoy them, he said the combat was more intellectual than turn based combat. learn to read

>>1488692
That comment wasn't wholly directed at him, but more of the attitude that persists in regards to those two titles.

And even then I wouldn't make the argument that either one has deeper combat. It's the same shit when you get right down to it (exploiting enemy weaknesses and patterns). The only difference is that one is real time and the other is not.

>>1488485
If you can tolerate some anime influences, the Tales series tends to have fast paced real time oriented combat. As far as /vr/ recommendations, I'd say give Phantasia PSX with an English patch and Eternia (Destiny II in the US) a try. Especially Eternia, since that was where they really started to nail the fluidity of combat, and the encounter rate is neither too high nor too low (later games tend to use overworld enemy sprites that one can choose to avoid rather than random encounters as well).

Just don't expect story to be all that good, compared to other series where it's a major focus. Tales tends to have more focus on the characters, their interactions, and generally solid gameplay, and the story is usually at the very least tolerable.

OP, it sounds like you would prefer to play action RPGs. Focus instead on Secret of Mana 1 and 2, Alundra, Beyond Oasis, Landstalker... stuff like that.

>>1488506
I'm a huge DQ fan but I just couldn't get into dq 9
Is this normal?

>>1488850

Yes. It was the beginning of the end. DQX is the end.