MontanaHatchet said:
kowenicki said:
oops montana sorry.
I did (was a slight exaggeration). But I have now revisited quite a few since. I have to say that the move away from turn based doesnt suit me. But maybe that is just me... or maybe it isnt seeing as sales of such seem to have generally declined? |
I prefer turn based battles as well. In fact, I commend Lost Odyssey on having a turn based battle system. However, I wish Mistwalker could have made the battle system a bit more interesting. The characters aren't really individualized (you can just link all your skills to your immortals), and it doesn't bring much new to the table. That may be fine for some people, but it's actually less advanced than some battle systems from the 90s, and JRPGs need to innovate now more than ever. I love JRPGs, and I want them to thrive. The market is responding to innovations in gameplay and fun, not a great story or great graphics. If JRPGs can shift with the demands of the market, they can reach the sales level they used to have.
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It's true that immortals can learn every skill. But they have different stat growth from each other. It's not true at all that Kaim, Seth and the other two (I think it could be a spoiler if I mention their names?) have no real individuality. You should be specializing Kaim and Seth for physical combat and magic should only be resorted to when absolutely needed (to revive party members, heal party in a big emergency, resort to black magic on enemies that are immune to physical attacks) because their magic stats really suck. The other two immortals should be specializing in magic because their magic stats are great while their strength and what not sucks.
If you want to talk lack of individuality, you can make a case for Blue Dragon. The characters have very slight natural differences between each other. They can be moulded into practically anything you want. But if you are going to mould the characters to be all the same, that's your own fault. You can specialize your characters, it's up to you. No one says you have to have everyone level up the same shadows to the same levels. Blue Dragon's class system reminded me a lot of some of the Dragon Quest games and FFV. It was pretty fun. I much prefer having skill customization in my rpgs (class systems, skill trees, etc.) than having a fixed skill set (like FF4 or some of the early Dragon Quests).
I agree that the genre needs to evolve more though. With boring battle after boring battle in long dungeons, most jrpgs seem like a chore. Of the six 360 jrpgs I tried, half I didn't really like. And two others (the mistwalker) I liked and I'll get the sequels for sure though I admit that they were draining after awhile. The combat in ToV was not as interesting to me as others, especially Tales fanboys, seem to think it is. Eternal Sonata involved a lot of button mashing capped off by rhythm button presses to do chains. Apparently this is supposed to be exciting but many traditional turn-based rpgs have more variety to combat than that. And I thought Infinite Undiscovery had potential but the game really managed to annoy me at times. Real-time does not automatically equal more interesting. If these real-time rpgs want to make their battles more exciting, they need to look at more action-oriented rpgs like Muramasa and Castle Crashers for inspiration. Now those games don't make battles seem like a chore. I love slashing the hell through baddies on the field in games like that but every time I get sucked into battle in ToV, I think "ugh crap, not this again." They need to do away with battle screen transitions and make slashing through baddies fun instead of feeling like a chore. Perhaps it's just me but I feel the action in Tales of Vesperia and Eternal Sonata is watered down compared to the action in a full-blown action rpg. MagnaCarta II looks like it has some promise though I hear the combat can be slow and requires pretty much the same strategy throughout the game (continually doing a chain over and over again).
