ITT you have to take the opposite side of what you believe about an RPG/RPG series.For example, if you think a game is shit, you have to do your best to unironically argue why it's good.I'll start: Tetsuya Nomura is actually a good storyteller. He writes more for character development and interaction, and less for world-building, but he does a good job of that. KH sucks only because of Disney's involvement. The characters themselves are wonderfully written and have compelling relationships.
>>3904338Good thought experiment, if you can abstain from backhanded compliments
>>3904347i do not believe /vrpg/ is capable
>>3904338>good storytellerWhy
>>3904338Okay, let's give this a shot.Legend of Mana is one of the prettiest looking and sounding games on the PS1. It has a colorful and vibrant world full of detailed character sprites, gorgeous background art, and some clever use of CG tricks for more complicated animations. The soundtrack is one of Yoko Shimomura's best, having a mixture of catchy field tunes, action-packed battle themes, and somber emotional pieces for some of the more plot-relevant sections. Overall, the audiovisual elements give exactly the kind of whimsical, fairy tale feel that befits the Mana series.While the structure of the campaign can be incredibly cryptic and abstruse, it also lends itself to potentially hundreds of hours of replay value. The player can treat the game like a pseudo-rogue-like - experimenting with different world map layouts to see which events, NPCs, recruitable characters, and quest lines will appear. In addition, there's a large variety of gameplay systems to delve into, such as growing plants, raising pet monsters, crafting equipment, et cetera. If crafting and survival games are your thing, you might get a lot of fun out of this game.
>>3904472This is the best dreamy-fantasy game ever made. A proper reiteration of it would be aweomse.
>Tetsuya Nomura is actually a good storyteller. TWETY and its sequel are goated, so he has that
>>3904338One of the most graphically advanced games on the PS1. The combat is intriguing and the enemies are ones that change how you play each time you encounter. Every character in this game has a unique design that manages to feel like it belongs and the story has so much depth you'll come back for more.
>>3905628i could make the same argument in the same thread about Thousand Arms
It's a good thing this game was rushed out the door. Seeing what happened afterwards to Lab Zero, it being unfinished is better than what it would have been corrupted into, which is a positively wild state of affairs. The gameplay loop could use some more options for attacks, but it is a passable Valkyrie Profile tribute, even if it is barebones and lacking attack variety. The game really drives home how much more powerful your party is getting, but does it in a nonsensical way (roughly an order of magnitude more damage every chapter, getting faster later. But enemy stats equally inflated so TTK is constant and it's just for shit stomping earlier enemies faster if you backtrack, which is limited itself)Oh, and Razmi's hot.
RPGs like Grimstone emulate systems of 1980s game design. It's admirable for them to keep games in this style alive AH SHIT I CAN'T DO IT, OLDER RPGs HAVE OBJECTIVELY WORSE GAME DESIGN IN MANY WAYS. IT'S SICK AND ARTIFICIAL WHEN PEOPLE INTENTIONALLY REPRODUCE WORSE EXPERIENCES FOR "NOSTALGIA" AND "SOUL". PEOPLE IN THE 90'S WEREN'T INTENTIONALLY REPRODUCING 70'S STYLE GAMES BECAUSE THERE WAS NO INCENTIVE TO BE REGRESSIVE FOR NOSTALGIA
>>3905743>70'S STYLE GAMESName three 1970s RPGs off the top of your head without looking them up.
>>3905747We don't produce 1920s style cars nowadays but that's not contingent on me naming three 20s models you dumb fuck
>>3905752I accept your graceful concession.
>>3904338Fallout 3 has some good side quests and aesthetically gets across the atmosphere of a bleak, dying world well.
>>3904338People give nomura way too much shit and blame him for shit he didn't even do
>>3905752Actually, the PT Cruiser was just that.
>>3904338I don't get it. Do you mean blatantlynlie or really look for good things about a game, dev, etc?
>>3906060incorrect, that's 1930s
Starfield has a brilliant shipbuilding system letting you snap together highly realistic ship components as simply as if they were lego or in Minecraft. The technical expertise in programming that boggles the mind. The game's plot takes some very interesting risks allowing your character to restart and be reborn in a new reality. It's a natural evolution on Bethesda's formula of roleplaying new characters with the player linking them as common consciousness, it's immersive in a way Bethesda hasn't attempted before. Emil had a genuinely lightning-in-a-bottle idea there. Zero gravity gunfights are very fun as well as disabling and raiding ships in space. It's the pirate gameplay Skyrim or Fallout never had.
>>3905743UhhhThis isn’t even a real game this is one 50th of a game
>>3904338Trails didn’t ever fundamentally transform rpgs but it did perfect its own craft and reach its full potential. It won’t ever be useful as a blueprint for other devs because no one could or should do what falcom did, and no one can execute their concept as well as them. The constant influx of new ideas and willingness to take risks is what makes the series great and will be continue to be its lifeblood in the future.
>>3906060Oh yeah those were a thing. Kind of crazy how those were everywhere not too long ago but they just suddenly disappeared.
>>3904338OP Is heterosexual
>>3905752Yet we have literally gone back to producing Vinyl OSTs for hipsters nostalgic for times they never were alive for. Your point is dogshit.
>>3907063If you think my point was that we don't produce anything at all based off nostalgia then that wasn't it. The point was expressedly stating that going back to older game design can be regressive. >>3905743
>>3907114>number of 70s RPGs anon named off the top of his head: ZERO
>>3907116You think they don't exist?
>>3907137I don’t think he knows of any.
White Knight Chronicles has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time and some very beautiful environments
>>3905747>Name three 1970s RPGs off the top of your head without looking them up.Pedit5, Beneath Apple Manor, Akalabeth.
>>3904338The cartography mechanic of Etrian adds no substance to the game. While hand-drawn maps were important for old school dungeon crawls, this era only lasted for a few years and had died out by the time of Shin Megami Tensei.
>>3904338For a game released for the SNES, FF5 is rather disappointing in two senses: first is VFX for magic spells, it's NES tier underwhelming... you don't feel the power at all; second is class grinding, the fact that the single best spot is the very last dungeon turns the game into a real timesink, not fun at all.
>>3912213great, i can follow this up with something on-theme for the thread:The pixel remaster is the best way to play the SNES FFs largely because of the cheat mechanics, as the gameplay aged poorly and it needed to be sped up
Diablo 2 is horribly balanced and every patch has only made it worse. Runewords ruined the game and the "endgame" is just mindlessly grinding the same content time and time again hoping for a single drop that MIGHT increase your clearspeed by like 2%.
Mother 3 is a breath of fresh air from the sinister game that was Earthbound, and the final boss take was really unique. Easily my fave.
>>3906904
It feels simultaneously very grindy, but too easy. Being able to kill anything in the overworld without entering combat if you're a few levels higher trivializes the game and encouraged me to grind just to run through dungeons quicker so I can get to the boss fight, and I was never penalized for overleveling an archetype because excess experience over the maximum is refunded. Additionally, some of the archetypes are just terrible and their main use seems to be the permanent stat increase for maxing it out. Another minor thing, but they make a big deal out of the ranking, it's pretty much always on display and it amounts to pretty much nothing until the very end of the game. It could've easily just not been on screen, or they could've just mentioned it at certain parts in the story.
