/vr/ - Retro Games

Imagine that, but apply it to about 3/4ths of the nearly 1000 Pokémon out there.

Inb4 pokefag hate

>>6408983
True. I never understood the appeal of Pokemon. There are so many better JRPGs out there and yet millions of people still buy the newest pokemon game every few years despite its glaring flaws. Seems just like another case of nostalgiafags to me.

>>6408951
I've sort of come to agree with this. Give me a tight party of a characters with specific roles. I like when the group feels like a group and not a rotation. Makes for better balance and banter.

>>6408951
For me I know how to press buttons and don't need a 5 minute mandatory tutorial to explain how to do that

>>6409210
>buy newest poke
>nostalgia
different audience anon

>>6408983
>>6409210
It's like trading cards but with cute animals that's really it. Pokemon is just "find a creature you think is cute and fun to use and enjoy it with your friends"

If you really want to get into the competitive it's there but for 99.9% of the people just exploring finding new monsters and trading with friends is all they need.

I dislike when the game focuses on the main characters instead of the world.

>>6408951
Big character rosters work fine until you get to some point in the game where it forces you to use characters that you literally never even touched since you picked them up.

Or when one of the characters you were maining in your party suddenly leaves for story reasons, usually taking all their gear with them, and now you're stuck with an underleveled rep for rest of the game.

>>6409514
Fucking Breath of Fire 2.

>>6409614
>Fucking Breath
In your case that'd be called cock breath

>>6408951
Agree. I wouldn't mind them as much if they didn't force you certain members for long parts of the playthrough. 4, 6 and 9 are super guilty of this. Give me a non-nonsense limited yet customizable party, like FF1, 3, 5.

>>6409514
>taking all their gear with them

>>6409786
FF4 wouldn't be much of a problem but they just kept giving and taking away party members so you don't really get that attached to them.

FF6 is just bloated where half of them could have just been NPC and nothing would change

As for FF9 I have no idea why they just dropped Freya story part ways into Disk 1 considering they could have done...something. Fucking Quina got character time than her.

>>6408951
I hear what you're saying but you picked a poor example, only three of those characters are lacking a fleshed out storyline, the rest not only have sidequests and story dedicated to them but they also have character development.

Suikoden would be a good game to prove your point, you can recruit 100 characters but you only get a small insight into who they are as characters and nothing after that, unless they're main characters.

My hangup is being disinterested in a games story if the gameplay is basic/not good. If I know ahead of time the story is great then I can suffer through any game no problem and really get invested in all the shitty mechanics, but if I try to play a basic:
>Attack
>Magic
>Item
>Run
Kind of RPG, even if the story is flawless I'll probably tap out after a few hours because I'm afraid to invest more time in. It's a bad habit I wish I didn't have but the truth is the vast majority of games are bad so I probably gain as much as I lose.

>>6410030
Relm, Strago, Mog, Umaro, Stzer, Gogo, and Gau are all characters that don't really serve the plot honestly. They just kind of join you...and that's it. Do they have character moments? Some but I just never really felt it was enough to justify them existing as party members.

>>6409803
She was forgotten. Her biggest nightmare became a reality. Vivi was told that he doesn't exist. Steiner realized he was loyal to the wrong side of history. etc etc.... all the quotes you see at the beginning of the game is foreshadowing to the conflicts these characters must resolve.

>>6410030
Then I guess you hated Chrono Trigger.

>>6409438
especially since you have to press a button to start the game and shit like "press the A button to jump" isnt exactly helpful. I think games like half life implemented a tutorial perfectly though, a training area separate from the normal game that is actually kind of fun

>>6408983
t. Masuda
>>6408951
Designers clearly playing favorites when it comes to picking who to keep for the next game or who gets special stuff
Like when the Charmander line was the only previous gen starter kept for SwSh or when Beedrill got a Mega when Butterfree never did

>>6409469
I feel like the opposite is true too, though. It’s rare that they get the mix just right.

>>6410910
Is it really the staff playing favorites, or are they just playing the percentages based on fan input. Look at Smash for example, how many Pokes are in that and how they’re all fan favorites.

>>6409514
Fucking digital devil saga 2

>>6410972
It's definitely a tight rope but especially these days I feel like far too many JRPGs aren't creating interesting fantasy worlds with their own situations and instead have devolved into MC Player wank. The Trails series especially, for all it's bluster about WORLD BUILDING, really did just throw too much of it out the window when it decided to become the Rean show and don't even get me started on Persona.

Does anyone else feel like not enough games are willing to kill playable characters anymore? I'm not asking to go full KILL EM ALL really but it just feels like it's been a while since there's been a really moving and significant character death. Or if someone does die it's in the ending, or they get replaced by someone with their exact same stats.

>>6411123
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume let you kill off party members to get buffs

>>6408951
A big part of the problem with this, especially final fantasy games, is that the roster becomes a smattering of reskins.
FF6 even started this.
Yes locke has steal, cyan has sword skills and terra and celes have magic before everyone else, but when everyone has fire/ice/lightning 3 and doing 9999 every cast it takes away a lot of character identity.
And then in ff7 even abilities like steal are all regulated to materia and everyone can do everything.

When everyone is special, nobody is special.

>>6411180
The only differences between characters in FF7 (also FF5, FF8 and some earlier FF which I don't play) are limit breaks and weapons.
>fire/ice/lightning and doing 9999
Cast Ultima. Some enemies absord particular elements.
I like how they made characters in FF9 like in FF6.
>pic
I know the transition from panel 1 into panel 2 but what's with the last panel?

>>6408951
This would be less of a problem in ff6 if all of the party members weren't side characters.

>>6411210
The last panel is numora's terrible character designs (ff12)

>>6411147
I played a bit of that but that game seems geared towards making your characters disposable

>>6411261
>ff12
Latest FF I played is FF9 so I don't know anything about those newer FFs.
The way he dresses and that belt make me think he's some kind of S&M guy.

>>6409442
I meant that more in a way of how they seem to be unable to see how trash the newer Pokemon games are due to how they have nostalgia for the video game series as a whole (and they likely believe that they'd "betray" that game by hating on it due to the emotional connections they had with the previous games). To me, Pokemon just seem like it has never really progressed in any meaningful way; every game feels like more or less the same, with pretty much the same, formulaic plot every game. Often, such games make that up by having great gameplay but I feel like Pokemon's combat is just really dull. Competitive pokemon might be better, but I've never felt the need to seriously care about EVs or IVs in the base game as none of these invisible stats seem to be required in any capacity to beat the game (would be cool if there was a romhack that would make use of these systems). I get that they're games made for kids, but Jesus Christ, why would you waste your time with them as an adult if that's not just for nostalgia reasons?

>>6411286
No but it kind of contributed to the troupe of "young upstart main character who wears fuck tonnes of belts/buckles for some reason."

>>6411383
>wears fuck tonnes of belts/buckles
Wear belts as armor?
Explain please?

>>6411403
No, just their character model. It started happening a lot more often that the "young upstart" type characters just wore lots of belts or buckles for whatever reason.

Either that, or the character with all the belts/buckles would be wearing all black clothing, so you could tell they were the "lone wolf" or "misunderstood/mysterious" character. It's simply just a visual identifier to catagorize characters.

>>6411417
Vincent from FF7 is another good example of this.

>>6409803
>As for FF9 I have no idea why they just dropped Freya story part ways into Disk 1
Because they didn't and her story still goes on into Disc 2?

>>6411123
There's probably not as much incentive to do it anymore since the world will find out about it a week before the game is out, at least in anything vaguely high profile. I can't remember the last game that had a cast where something like that would actually have impact though, most characters period are utterly interchangeable dolls that spit out the same Joss Whedon lines when you pull their strings, if it's not overt misery porn or bog standard anime. Mass Effect probably got closest but that was over a decade ago.

>>6411123

Old school games were wimpy like that.

>>6408951
I forgot who Relm and Umaro were

>>6412628
Best dark side choice in the game. Everything else is puppy kicking or just being a destructive jackass.

>>6411123
Think it's kind of funny how willing Square was at killing their characters.
FF2 had like 4 deaths
FF4 had Tellah
FF5 had Galuf
FF6 had Shadow if you didn't wait for him
And Aerith in FF7

Maybe Square finally got it out of their system. Or maybe they felt they could never top her death so they decided to not do it again.

With the exception of Suikoden, same thing. I don't get into team building much unless there's a substantial difference between how every character plays. Some games suffer from this problem where you have a whole bunch of characters in a party and they turn out to be all viable for the same exact fucking thing.

At the same time, having to individually develop every character in a game with many of them, when you find that it's pointless to do so towards the end of the game because you can easily just handle the same 3/4 party members and get it over with is just silly. If I'm gonna put some time into that shit you might as well give me something to chew on. Don't tease being obnoxiously overpowered. I really, really hate when games have real good mechanics and there's nothing that motivates you to learn them and use them well. That makes it hard for me to enjoy a second time around because it seems like a waste of time.

>>6411123
I guess they're more bothered about gameplay loss than story loss. Having one less option or something they put hours into without realizing they would end up losing.

>>6412512
>There's probably not as much incentive to do it anymore since the world will find out about it a week before the game is out,

That's a depressing philosophy. I certainly understand not wanting your game spoiled, and it's certainly hard to keep a lid on things like they used to, but if the game or story is actually GOOD then it shouldn't matter if you're twist gets ruined. If you need a surprise twist than that's just a cheat. It's the rest of the story that makes the twist good not the twist that makes the story good.

>>6409210
Pokemon up to and including Gen 5 was great. with 6 it started going downhill, now GF hardly seems to give a shit anymore and just release zero effort shit because they know they can always rely on consoomers to fill their wallets no matter what.

>>6410038
>>>6410030
>Relm, Strago, Mog, Umaro, Stzer, Gogo, and Gau are all characters that don't really serve the plot honestly. They just kind of join you...and that's it. Do they have character moments? Some but I just never really felt it was enough to justify them existing as party members.

I view 'serve the plot' as having an emotional character motivation to join the returners and fight the Empire.

Relm and Strago absolutely do - Strago is a descendent of Espers and their hometown is ravaged in Gestahl's war to unlock the power of magic. It's just annoying that you get them relatively late in the game and have to grind to build them up - especially Relm who is useless without magic.

Umaro and Gogo are bonus characters.

Agree with Setzer, Mog, and Gau. You should also add Shadow to the list. You could have kept Mog and Shadow as bonus characters and cut the roster to 10 playable characters.

>>6412878
>Relm who is useless without magic
Control

>>6412878
Gau was raised by monsters because his father had dementia in a world that was too busy fighting with eachother to support him, that's tragic. Setzer is essentially trying to kill himself because his girlfriend died due to his recklessness and he's trying to prove his way of life wasn't a waste. Shadow is either Relms father or step-father(can't recall)but had to abandon her because he didn't want to put her in danger. These are all scenes from side-quests which help build the world, and flesh out the characters.

>>6412953
You ignored the part where I defined relevance to the story in terms of having motivation to fight the Empire.

Having said that, I don't have any qualms with FFVI's roster. I personally enjoy the game for the diverse set of characters with unique skills, as well as the flexibility to build your party the way you want most of the game.

However, if you had to cut characters to get more fleshed out development, Gau, Mog, Setzer, Gogo, Umaro, and Shadow are the expendable ones.

>>6413109
I kinda wish FFVII got a similar roster. Not story wise but simply have more uniqueness to each character in battle.

>>6409210
People play Pokémon for one of a few things:
-They are literal children and/or mentally retarded
-Comfy monster collecting in a colourful world, probably a similar demographic as the Animal Crossing crowd
-Multiplayer, although the best multiplayer experience is in online battle simulators rather than on cart

Pokémon's multiplayer is deep enough for there to be an interesting metagame (although it's a flawed metagame). But people certainly don't play the games for their engaging and challenging single player combat mechanics, although I think the games would benefit from the opportunity to choose difficulty levels (and for there to be one that's actually challenging). There's better RPGs for that.

>>6413116
I agree. The stripped equipment system and custom skills through materia made every character seem cookie cutter in battle in comparison until you could use a limit break.

>>6413139
New Threat tries to fix that by adding some gimmicks, different equipment and such but it's nothing close.

>>6413139
Oh no, you both get a bunch of fun memorable characters AND the extremely important bonus of being able to customize your own party which is one of the best things a JRPG can do.

>>6413228
> Fun

That's the problem - they're not 'fun.' They all practically work the same.

>>6413254
You don't see a difference between Yuffie who can use deathblow with 100% accuracy and Barret who gets stronger the more ap he's equipped with? They aren't largely different but there's plenty to make some builds around, far more choice than most rpgs give you.

>>6408951
yeah, but take out 3 of them (mog, gogo, umaro, because they have almost zero story affecting presence post the beginning) and you have 9 story based characters.

maybe relm as a tagalong for strago and shadow really being another "hidden" character, makes it 7 total.

>>6411180
nah, my FF6 was like;

characters with true different skills, like sabin or cyan, they used those skills before magic. celes and terra were my goto for magic, terra above celes for morph damage stuff, usually 1 on each team at the end.

locke eventually was my emergency item healer in case someone died or was silenced.
i never really used summons for YEARS until i found some pretty useful over most others, then i made 1 or 2 guys use summons more.

i went out of my way to learn all the blue magic and rages i could, finding that gau has some damn good rages, even in his starting kit. blue magic was a bit of a pain, mostly because it does some stuff right like having water and wind spells, but has other shit that is kinda useless. but hey, bluemagelife.

>>6411814
i consider her story "done" with the whole sir fratly thing finished.

>>6413139
imagine if you had no All materia, shit like that, just like older FF, you could just multi target or single target with effect % doing more or less.

i kinda hated All materia shit, even in the remake, its STILL shit because you only have ONE OF THEM when you want like one per character. i hate having to choose if i want to heal all my characters or haste all my characters, or just ONE AT A TIME bullshit.

just let me pay more MP to use it on all my characters so something. god the remake pisses me off so much and i fucking still am sitting at the final chapter, just not wanting to beat it.

>but why'd you buy it?

i got it as a gift and i fucking hate it, dragging my feet the whole way like being taken to the movies, but its not the movie you want to watch.

>>6410438
Chrono trigger is a bit more complicated. A hurr-durr spam attack/tech strategy will get you pounded like that effeminate twink in the school showers.

Timing attacks and order of murder are factors as well, which make it more sophisticated, and for me, enjoyable than a basic turn based rpg, like pokemon

Slow text speed is a real issue for me.

>>6411180
The basics of what you need are melee damage, elemental damage, healing, buffs (maybe), debuffs (maybe), and support/utility (maybe). Find what works best for you and keep it simple, and you'll roll through any final fantasy game.

Playing ffta, I just went humie ninja/fighter x2, ninja/white x2, ninja/black x2. I had such an easier time than previous playthroughs.

So much bloat in these games that are "more content" but are pretty much the same.

I tried to play FF Tactics, couldn't get my head around movement or what to do in general, and I dropped it.

>>6413478
I want to play it. My two options are the android port or psx. Which one is better?

>>6409514
Phantasy star 4 was a bastard about this shit.

>>6413495
I couldn't tell you. I only did one real level and felt like there was too much to get my head around in too short a time, and put the game down

>>6409668
Why the anger and cringe?

>>6413574
You tell me fucking breath

>>6413320
Which was Disc 2

>>6413138
>-They are literal children and/or mentally retarded

Honestly this. I remember the news reports when Pokemon Go game out.

>>6411261
Nomura didn't do FF12, and the designs are better than any of the other games, save for FF9.

>>6413138
>They are literal children and/or mentally retarded
This might actually make sense. Like, I'm sorry, but you have to be seriously retarded to, for instance, know the names of all pokemon by heart.

>>6411180
This is my issue with FF6, FF7, FF8, and original FF12, it's boring when all characters can do everything, the good thing about FF7R was that all characters had their own identity even with everyone having access to magic.
In FF6 all they needed to do was have each character have a multiplier for AP needed for spells, you could still break the game, but Terra needing 100 AP for Thundara and Thundaga and Locke Needing 300 AP and 500 AP, respectively, would've enforced more class identity.
FF7s system is so flat that all the characters will be the same no matter what you do, maybe having more drastic statistical differences between characters would've helped along with individual differences in normal attacks. Maybe having Tifa hit her three hit combo at 0,3/0,3/0,4 damage with each hit having a crit chance while Barret is long ranged and so forth... that might not be a bad hack idea for the original?

>>6415749
Nah, grew up with those games, I know all the three first generations of monsters by heart.

>>6415761
>>>6411180

>In FF6 all they needed to do was have each character have a multiplier for AP needed for spells, you could still break the game, but Terra needing 100 AP for Thundara and Thundaga and Locke Needing 300 AP and 500 AP, respectively, would've enforced more class identity.

The amount of grinding it takes to teach every character fire/ice/bolt 3, meteor, flare, quick, and Ultima is immense. I'm convinced that this criticism is more prevalent due to access to turbo modes. And without the internet telling you stats formulas, you would upgrade things like stamina on level up.

You don't HAVE to grind like an autist to beat FFVI. In fact, many of the best character builds don't rely on magic at all.

If I were to rebalance the game aside from unbugging stats, Blitz and SwdTech would use MP, and tools would have expendable ammo.

>>6415796
It's not about grinding like an autist it's more about enforcing a class identity to the characters. You don't need formulas, or a pre-planned route to make all the characters pretty much identical, it happens by chance because of the available characters espers and the relatively similar stat allocations at base, and if you don't already know what to do you'll reach such a high level that you'll be dealing 9999 damage anyway.
It's fine that Ultima takes forever to get, it's the ultimate spell, just like name says, it's just that if a completely non-magical swordsman and a literal magicbeast/human hybrid take the same amount of effort to learn the spell it goes against common sense and the rules set out by the story. Having some spells like Poison be easy for Shadow and Locke to learn while Cure magic is easier for someone like Sabin also fits their personality, so it would further aid in characterization through gameplay.

>>6415835
>It's not about grinding like an autist it's more about enforcing a class identity to the characters.

But FFVI has class identity. Every character has unique skills to use in battle, and there are clear armor/weapon classes. For example, only Terra/Celes can equip the Minerva, only Edgar/Mog can use spears, only Relm/Strago can equip animal suits and rods, etc.

As I pointed out earlier, many of these equipment builds are far more powerful end-game than spamming magic. Only a few characters rely on casting magic to be relevant if you split your party the right way in Kefka's tower (Relm, Strago, Shadow). Everyone else can do more damage with attacks or skills.

> You don't need formulas, or a pre-planned route to make all the characters pretty much identical, it happens by chance because of the available characters espers and the relatively similar stat allocations at base, and if you don't already know what to do you'll reach such a high level that you'll be dealing 9999 damage anyway.

Yea, this doesn't happen unless you grind excessively. Without grinding your party will be between level 45-55 by end game. At that level very few attacks/spells/skills will do 9999 damage, and only a few characters will have learned the most powerful magic spells.

>It's fine that Ultima takes forever to get, it's the ultimate spell, just like name says, it's just that if a completely non-magical swordsman and a literal magicbeast/human hybrid take the same amount of effort to learn the spell it goes against common sense and the rules set out by the story.

Except that 'non magical swordsman' has shit mag pwr, so teaching him ultima without intentionally levelling magic pwr results in literally half the damage as teaching it to Relm, Strago, Terra, or Celes and less overall damage than quadra slice. In other words, it's a waste of time.

>>6415861
No. You're wrong, I'm right.

>>6415876
> t. Autist who didn't actually play the game

>>6408951
Depends on the game but generally it doesn't bother me

Are there any JRPGs with huge casts that you can use all at once, or at least switch them in battle on the fly like FFX?

Not counting SRPGs

>>6415889
Super Robot Wars doesn't really count since they are already established characters/mechs and all for fan service. Talking many original characters that you don't know at all.

>>6415885
It couldn't be that we disagree... you fucking retard.

>>6415934
Except you're too stupid to see that your opinion is based on being an autistic grinder in an easy RPG.

>>6412764
Tidus death :^)

>>6416225
Which one :^)

>>6409514
this just happened me and i just realised it's to punish me for not roleplaying in an rpg. I've been letting 3 or 4 characters run around without armor or magic and now I'm forced into their role to know how it feels. Until the party change again and I'm back to normal hopefully I never have to roleplay in these games again.

>>6416061
My point literally was that discouraging grinding for a flat party of copies would enforce more class and character identity, without taking any options away from those that want them.
Before you put words in my mouth, please, please learn to read.

>>6416689
And my point is that if you actually played the game, you wouldn't have that opinion.

It takes on average 15-20 battles late game to teach characters x1 spells. Making 4 carbon copy characters takes 60-100 battles. The next 4 takes another 120-200 battles.

The only way that you get carbon copies is to grind like an autist or use turbo mode. If that's not enough to deter players from making carbon copies of mages then nothing is.

>>6413138
>Comfy monster collecting in a colourful world
never really understood that. How can you find Pokemon to be comfy? I've always found SNES/SFC-era JRPGs to be the comfiest. FF6, Trials of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Romancing SaGa, Bahamut Lagoon, etc. Whenever I played Pokemon, I just got really bored and the areas felt like recycled garbage. And that's not even due to the absence of an interesting plot; I enjoyed playing through Octopath Traveler despite the plot feeling rather disconnected. Even older JRPGs, s.a. FF1, FF2, DQ1, DQ2, etc., were much more enjoyable than any Pokemon game I've ever played, despite their simplicity.

>>6416749
I have... and I have that opinion, because I have.

>>6415796
nobody cares that you don't need to do that, the fact of the matter is that you are able to do that and that alone is bad video game design as then players of that game could overcome challenges by just grinding mindlessly. Simply restricting certain espers to certain characters, like in BNW, could've fixed all of that. Moreover, giving everyone unique magic instead of the same, stupid shit would've been greatly appreciated (and no, lore magic doesn't really count as that isn't a replacement for normal magic). They could've also just condensed Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3, etc., into one Fire spell, one Ice spell, etc. and then used the extra space to add more interesting spells that mean something other than pretty numbers on the screen. The FF5 romhack "Void Divergence" tried to do that and didn't even do that bad of a job, I actually liked it a lot, too bad essentially nothing was documented so it felt like playing a SaGa game for the first time while knowing absolutely nothing.

Couldn't play Total War Medieval 2 because the camera control was awful.

Frequently get angry at X-com(the original) for not having enough tooltips and information easily accessible, then proceed to boot the game once in a while due to the 40k mod.

>>6417110
A lot of JRPGs can be "solved" via brute force grinding, but that doesn't mean it's what you're supposed to do, it's just the extra solution for brainlets.

>They could've also just condensed Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3, etc., into one Fire spell, one Ice spell, etc. and then used the extra space to add more interesting spells
Removing easy to create and pad out spells that iterate on each other doesn't mean they'll magically "have room" for more creative spells. It just means that what's already there will take up less space on the spell list. That's not how game development works.

>>6408951
FF6 was the first JRPG I played so I have plenty of nostalgia for it, but I definitely got overwhelmed by the number of characters. My autism has never been able to handle deciding which characters to use and it was worse back then when games didn't have unused characters passively level up. FFIV was way easier on my autism with its fixed party compositions, and gameplay-wise FF6 was a lot more fun when I replayed it and did a Celes/Edgar/Setzer-only run.

The funny thing is with Chrono Cross the cast was just so huge and irrelevant that I didn't even worry about it and just used the same handful of favorite characters all the time. So I guess once a cast gets big enough that there's no expectation of using everyone then it becomes tolerable.

>>6417173
>A lot of JRPGs can be "solved" via brute force grinding, but that doesn't mean it's what you're supposed to do, it's just the extra solution for brainlets.
The difference is that, in FF6, the max level is very high, meaning that grinding is very efficient (and, unless you're intentionally refusing to, the game is very, very easy to exploit). Had they lowered it to, say, 50 or 40, then people would've been forced to use their brain more in lieu of just spamming whatever their strongest attack is until the boss is dead. I also don't fully agree with the sentiment that grinding works in every JRPG as in some, such as the Romancing SaGa games, grinding can make areas literal nightmares as enemies scale up with you, meaning that, at a certain point, you're not even able to grind further. I wish more games expected you to min-max and were thus balanced accordingly, not like in Final Fantasy, where just doing all the sidequests could make the final boss a cakewalk.
>Removing easy to create and pad out spells that iterate on each other doesn't mean they'll magically "have room" for more creative spells
I am not sure what you mean by that as I am quite certain that those spells were removed in Void Divergence and replaced with something else that was actually good. Overall, players should be forced to also use items more often, especially when it comes to healing. You shouldn't just be able to spam Cure 3 with every party member when your HP is low; you also don't have to grind to get your characters to learn these spells. That happened to me passively while doing the side-content. I just regularly swapped Espers and ignored those that I knew I wouldn't really need.

>>6417361
>I am not sure what you mean by that as I am quite certain that those spells were removed in Void Divergence and replaced with something else that was actually good.
Unsurprisingly a fan hack changes content. But that's not how normal game development works. If they were going to add more interesting and useful spells to the game they would do it without removing anything. Variations of the same elemental magic are incredibly easy to implement given that the spell base is already programmed (all one needs to do is change the number values) and pad out the spell list to make it appear fuller without actually putting in any additional effort, hence their existence. On the other hand making more interesting spells not only requires more planning but also the coding and implementation of said spells, which cannot simply be copied and pasted.

My point is that it's not wholly unrealistic to ask for more spells, but to act as if they would pop into existence if the devs had compacted existing spells that were low effort as it is into each other is ridiculous.

I can't get into Persona 2 because of how you need to grind for cards to get demons instead of just talking to them like in Nocturne. Maybe the system gets better further into the game but I only played about 10 hours of it.

>>6413513

>>6417402
It's not really me expecting the FF devs to do that: Of course I know Square would never condense the spells that iterate on each other into one each, especially considering how these extra, low-effort spells have turned into somewhat of a staple in the series. Yet, all of that does not stop me from criticizing it for that. I also don't expect Gamefreak to release some extremely strategic Pokemon game, as the majority of the target audience just wants a simple, monster collecting simulator. Thing is, while why they chose not to do that is completely logical from their viewpoint, I'd still argue that it could've been a much better game had they not tried to pander to as many people as possible, but to a more niche audience. And this is not something ridiculous to expect for game developers to do in general: The SaGa games are made for a very niche audience (just compare the amount of translations and romhacks that exist for Romancing Saga 3 with FF6; you'll see that FF6 has a bunch of translations and even retranslations, most of which are finished. Meanwhile RS3 has just two, outdated, unfinished, and very unpolished English translations) and yet the developers never made an attempt at trying to casualize it in the remasters: the game still doesn't hold your hand nor does it explain most of the mechanics. Overall, they chose to prioritize fame and money over true quality, and that's fine but still does not justify any of the flaws the game has.

>>6415903
It's not a great game, but BoF1 lets you swap out any non-KOed party member with someone else from the roster. There are 8 total characters, 4 in battle at once, and if you die with living party members in reserve you don't lose 1/4th your money. You still get sent back to a save statue though.

Also, this doesn't count as retro (360-gen) but The Last Remnant's main gimmick was huge warlike encounters. You could have up to 5 groups in play at once, with each group having 4 or 5 units. It wasn't as cool as it sounds on paper though.

>>6419490
BoF 4 is similar.
6 members, 3 in the front, 3 in the back.
The back row members regenerate AP (temporary AP, not permanent) and randomly do unique actions (depends on the character).

>>6409514
that's actually based tbqh
preventing you from cheesing the game by only using the same three busted characters the whole time