/vr/ - Retro Games

If you make random battles actually require a bunch of strategy, it's going to become incredibly tedious when every fight lasts more than 20-30 seconds.

>>913360
>Its so simple that lots of the games feature an auto-battle command

most older JRPGs are pretty simple like that. I like Persona 2 IS and EP a lot because the battle command go on themselves unless you stop the party from doing so and rearrange orders and positions to unlock fusion spells.

if that is still too simple then I'd look for newer WRPGs and JRPGs that are not /vr/ related.

>>913373
if you make them require no strategy its even more tedious because its just a waste of the players time.

if the battles last longer you can just have less encounters or reduce the distance between save points

>>913360
Live-A-Live

>>913376
I guess, but you still have to fight random encounters to level up. I suppose if you could find a balance that makes encounters tougher, less frequent, but still able to level you up adequately, it might work. I'm guessing nobody goes that route because it's easier to just make the player kill fodder for a half hour.

>>913391
theres been tons of XP sysystems that allow players to level up quickly, without over leveling

some games give extra xp if you are below the monsters level

some games have soft caps on experience (eg level 1-5 takes 100 experience per level and level 6-10 takes 1,000 xp per level and level 6 monsters gave way more xp than level 5)

some games make it so that level ups dont contribute much to power, and your strength comes from gear

some games make it so the good sources of strengths are all stuff you find inside treasure-chests

>>913394
You wanna like, give some examples? I'm not disagreeing or anything, I'd just like to know what games you're talking about.

>>913360
Try Live-A-Live. Every encounter is individually designed and has a serious chance of killing your ass if you don't fight carefully. Also, you regain your health at the start of every fight (which is useful, since you will get knocked down to 10% every time), and even though a leveling system is technically present there's pretty much no grinding (enemies generally don't reappear except for in a handful of spots).

>>913360
Not related, but I'll leave this here because this .gif blows my mind

>>913402
a good example of soft cap on xp is ys arc of nephatism (not vr though)

the etrian oddyssy games are an example where level ups do very little and gear is the true source of power up

i cant recall a jrpg that modifies xp gained based on your level vs the monsters but in diablo2-like games the experience curve works that way. The higher above a monsters level your character is the less xp they give

another example of a solid experience curve is pokemon. You can never be 'underleveled' because you are always finding new pokemon to capture at higher level.

I don't think it's possible for a standard JRPG to have depth. Selecting choices from a short list just doesn't allow for much complexity, especially as most of the choices are obvious and the battle ends after a few of them anyway.

I'd be very interested in seeing a counterexample, but I think it's impossible. You need additional complexity, eg. SRPG type positioning if you want a deep RPG battle system.

Paper Mario and Megaman Battle Network

they aren't standard RPGs, though the battle systems melt my face off

>>913651
thats for twitch-related reasons instead of actual strategy or depth.

its borrowing the depth that other genres have

>>913625
>I'd be very interested in seeing a counterexample, but I think it's impossible.

Well, it's not retro, but Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga did it really well. In the last areas the enemies had a ridiculous amount of immunities (and absorptions and reflections), so you had to memorize the one or two damage types they're actually vulnerable against and configure your characters accordingly.
The skill system allows your character to learn all skills in the game with enough time and effort, but you can only have eight active skills at a time, so you really have to consider which skills your characters should equip. The depth in this case mainly comes from pre-battle customization.
But the battles themselves are also quite deep because of the press turn battle-system. It's rather hard to explain, but you have three characters in battle and three action-flags. If you make an action with one character, you lose an action flag. If you crit with your character or attack the enemy's weakness, the action flag starts to flash, which means you've got one extra-attack. You can pass your turn to the next character, but your full action flag will either start to flash or your flashing flag will disappear. If you crit an enemy while your action flag flashes, it doesn't disappear but the next action flag in line starts to flash. If all your action flags are already flashing, the first flag simply disappears, even if you crit an enemy. If you miss an attack, you lose your current and the next action flag.
And the same goes for enemies, so it's important to either take party members that aren't vulnerable to common enemy attack elements in the area you're in or you have to equip passive skills that give you elemental immunity.
This coupled with the fact that every random encounter can kill you if you're not careful, especially towards the end of the game, makes for a rather thrilling experience.

>>913668
Memorizing required battle setups doesn't add a lot of depth. Either you memorize it or you don't. It doesn't help much in distinguishing player skill. You could make it completely redundant by playing with a strategy guide.

Depth in a game means opportunity to use skill. The deeper the game the better the highly skilled player will do compared to the unskilled player. In a very deep game (eg. Go), the professional player can give a ridiculously huge handicap to the beginner and still win. The skill ceiling is high enough that no human will ever meet it.

In the case of JRPGs, the skill ceiling is so low that most people can play close to optimally. It's a shallow genre.

>>913624
>The higher above a monsters level your character is the less xp they give
Don't remember Diablo 2 having that (didn't it just have standard steeply scaling experience requirements?), but Suikoden is like what you've described

>>913360
>Are there any jrpgs that have any real depth to the basic enemy encounters?
SaGa games, especially Unlimited Saga (though that one isn't /vr/)

>>913679
>Memorizing required battle setups doesn't add a lot of depth. Either you memorize it or you don't.

Sorry, but have you read more than the first line of my post? The depth comes not from memorization, but from customizing your characters according to the attacks and weaknesses of the enemies.
And then there's the battle system I explained in detail.
Oh, and ressource management which I forgot to mention.

Of course JRPGs don't have the depth of games like chess, players are supposed to be able to play them for ~30 hours and move on, I'm just making the point that not every JRPG is "attack in every random encounter until the enemy is dead".

>>913689
>"attack in every random encounter until the enemy is dead".
Well, "attack the enemy's weakness until it's dead" doesn't sound very thrilling either.

>>913694
Most enemies later in the game don't have a weakness. There are just one or two elements they happen not to be immune against.

>>913697
But given the repetitive nature of random encounters in JRPGs this kind of encounters generally stops being challenging once you beat one, since beating it is almost akin to solving a puzzle (finding out what works and what doesn't) and since you already know the solution the second time around, then...

>>913708
But every encounter is different. The enemies have a number of different attacks, they might crit you, they might inflict status ailments on you, your characters might miss, they might kill your characters and you have to be flexible in order to beat them while conserving your ressources so you don't run out of SP and minimizing the chance of getting a game over at the same time.

OP, it ain't retro, but Grandia II is a step in the right direction. I suggest looking up a video. Most memorable and unique combat system I've seen in a JRPG.

>>913728
Hmm. I haven't played Grandia II, but I remember the combat in the first Grandia being overall pretty fun. Movement, multiple attack types, area attack spells (unless I'm completely misremembering).

I never finished the game back when I owned it, though, because I had made the little girl my main spellcaster and then the game forces her out of your party with no warning. It became a real slog after that.

I should give the game another shot sometime.

>>913360

this is why I like SRPGS

play some Final Fantasy Tactics, or Tactics Ogre, every fight has the potential of knocking your shit around.

>>913903
>and then the game forces her out of your party with no warning. It became a real slog after that.
Shit like this is probably why I don't bother with JRPG anymore aside from Etrian Odyssey

Most Persona games have random battles that will fuck you up if you don't use the right affinities which goes right along with choosing the right combination of party members and right persona for yourself and in some of them you should negotiate, too. They definitely have depth.