Games with interesting combat systems

Tell me about games that have interesting and unique combat systems, even if they end up not fully sticking the landing.

Webm related is resonance of fate, an active time turn based jrpg in which positioning matters for destroying certain parts of enemies, crossing between team mates charges up special attacks, and there's a lot of running and gunning and you can even juggle enemies too.

This was obviously an excuse to show panty shots but RoF is one of my favorite JRPGS purely for its combat. No fucking sequel man fuck

it was and it wasn't, I'm genuinely interested in the topic and this is the only webm of the game I have, but yea it's nice to look at.

PANTSU
PANTSU

Ahahahahaha
If this game didn't have pantyshots you would shit on it, calling it juggleslop or shootanslop, you hypocrite shits

Legend of Dragoon

It was a blatant FFVII copycat for the most part but they had the genius idea that every time you launch a special attack you have to play a QTE rhythm minigame. Yeah, it was garbage.

Grandia. It's what I think of when I'm asked what my favorite combat is (low bar to beat notwithstanding). 2's combat was peak of the series imo.
ATB, positioning, timing specific attacks can make the enemy miss a turn (and vice versa), and AOE attacks.
3 introduced combo attacks when you time certain attacks with multiple party members, but I couldn't get through that game.

Isn't that basically expedition 33?

learn to read

Killing Floor has a different headshot mechanism than standard games.
Instead of just giving a bonus, the head has a separate health pool. Bodyshots only damage the body while headshots damage body and head.

Banner Saga

This has a round robin combat system. Which means the enemy must get a turn after the player gets a turn. So if you have a lot of ally characters on the board, and the enemy has only a few very strong characters, those very strong characters will get a lot more turns and bitch slap your people. You are effectively punished for killing off enemies too quickly or not in the right order. Sounds fun?

The Last Remnant
I refuse to elaborate

Grandia 2 is still the best turn based ever made. Timing your own attacks to cancel enemies is just the best and most strategy vidya has ever had.
Many games have a similar system, such as HoMM 5, but rarely as exploitable as Grandia.

Temple of Elemental Evil is the best D&D rendition ever (and guess what, it also has elements of turn denial like Grandia). Having your move points and attack point fused into one big action bar is brilliant. Either move a lot and have one attack or don't move and get more. And use and abuse positioning to get opportunity attacks every time someone moves in your reach.

does not sound particularly interesting

I liked RAGE's focus on fighting erratically moving enemies that have armor plates you can shoot off.

I've tried to replay that game several times only to realize that I'd already read up on how the combat works before and just forgot because it's nonsensical.

Yeah, Last Remnant is one of the shittiest JRPGs I ever tried, and I did try a few.

More like legend of da troon

old gen monster hunters. The fact that just by positioning yourself correctly is the whole combat it still manages to be extremely intriguing and incredibly addicting.

Every interesting real time combat system worth talking about uses the same core of animation/hitbox/hurtbox driven gameplay that souls, monster hunter and fighting games are built on. The fundamentals are pretty much solved and everyone is just arguing over the details

The Caligula Effect has a really unique combat system that could’ve been awesome if it were made by more talented developers. Too bad the execution was pretty bad but that kind of sums up every FuRyu game

parrying is not interesting. it's game design training wheels.

wish I still had my ds to try this game

Fags, roasties and coomers can't connect to stick figures.

it is in Worldless, try it.
I know, buy an ad, but I'm here jerking off the game for free.

so tell me then how it makes it interesting because pressing the designated block/parry button at the correct time is not, and that's what it looks like. mgsr has the only tolerable parries imo, oh and maybe the offset attacks in wilds which function via the same principle

What game do we blame for the influx of parry shit in every action game for the past decade(+?)?

no E33 is even worse lol.
in legend of dragoon you hit the button when your sword makes contact with the enemy.
in E33 they're just randomly placed QTEs that don't align with anything.

Them stickwomen look kinda thick tho...

the obvious answer is sekiro, but parries just being another form of roll slop, except more shallow because it doesn't even compromise your positioning and even rewards you with higher damage output than if you had avoided the attack via positioning is a symptom of the dark souls 3fication of video games. actually, maybe it was Bloodborne

Abstract shapes

maybe if they'd been bothered to make actual character designs the game would have done better.

Enemy can either do magic or phisical attack of white or black type, recognizing the type of attack and blocking with the corresponding guard charges your shield/absorption you can use as a special guard to instantly end the enemy's turn and deal a good chunk of damage.

Meant for

I now vaguely remember Eternal Sonata

KitN is real time, not turn-based. You're in control of the wisp 100% of the time and must touch units to have them charge their attacks/skills while enemies move about and shoot bullets. That's just a surface-level description that doesn't go into unit behavior, equipment you must collect during fights (there's no exploration or shop) and a stat transfer system.
It also released on the PSP and got a remaster on the japanese Switch eshop, if you don't want to use emulation.

Do the lightning attacks affect the enemies more if they're standing in water?

remaster on the japanese Switch eshop

oh shit, but I'm guessing that's japanese only.

also the problem is that those remasters might not really mirror the experience the games were designed for. i played the world ends with you on switch because I didn't have my ds anymore and it wasn't the same.

I believe there's a resistance up/down effect because I know you can't apply Burn to enemies standing in water, but I'm not sure the exact effect for lightning
It's also raining which makes clothes and things wet but all of the small details get murdered by webm compression so you can't see how obscene it looks

Is Expedition 33 more difficult than Resonance of Fate? I found Resonance difficult initially but once you know the mechanics it's pretty easy

I wanted to say monhun but figured it was too much of a plain action game to fit here.
I've tried the older ones but Worldborne is what clicked with me for various reasons. I don't disagree that the LS was indeed plenty of iframes and was pretty damn easy, but the rest of the gear was legit, they really nailed the combat tight, like a complex formula. Late/postgame has you going from finding the best action for an opening, to having the monster at your mercy for how experienced you are fighting it. And making the wrong move has them punish you, even to the point of them fairly comboing you to death.

The devs also brought Riviera and Yggdra Union (all from the Dept. Heaven series) globally to the Switch and they're some of the few games you can entirely play with touch controls. I don't know if they did the same for KitN and why they're keeping it JP onry for now.

PC version works perfectly fine.
Enjoy giving guns tacticool attachments.

This.

Game title?

I wish I had played TWEWY when it was new. It had one of the most unique control schemes when it comes to touch screen controls

No Rest For The Wicked

Neat. Does the game look like it's going to internally implode considering the director's meltdown online or is it ever going to exit Early Access?
I'm near the start of act 2 and unfortunately I don't think so.
I picked hard, mainly what happens with hard is that normal enemies get to two/three shot you, normal bosses get to two shot you, and optional bosses get to one shot you. So you think fuck yeah the game wants me to get good all the time, but having gone through all sorts of optional bosses before truly starting act 2 the game seems to have gone really down in difficulty. But who knows maybe the rest of the game will go wild with super bosses who have really complex attack strings, I kind of felt that way with Dualiste and he wasn't an optional boss.

the game has zero vision to begin with, all it can do is look pretty, and only on the surface because practically it sucks with how often there is shit in the foreground that doesn't properly get phased out and then obstructs your vision

I love stranger of paradise beat em up style with rpg class switching like you wouldn't believe

I love TWEWY but I could never get 100% comfortable with the dual screen battle system,

It's probably been discussed to death already, but Xenoblade 2. Its combat system is legit brilliant, there are so many parts that individually do their own thing, but also interplay and layer on top of each other.

Auto-attacks lead into arts, which lead into specials

But also driver combos and blade combos

Which both combine for fusion combos

Blade combos provide extra damage and effects, seals/debuffs, and orbs

...which lead into chain attacks and full bursts

But fusion combos also flow into chain attacks and result in huge damage with or without orbs

Fusion combos have two different types that do different things

DoT is a whole other things that you can set up with fusion combos, and stacks damage with everything else

There are like 50 different ways to play the game. It's honestly kinda impressive how well fleshed out and cohesive it is, and the next game feels like a step backward with how tacked-on some of the mechanics feel.

stop saying beat em up where it does not apply because there's no meaningful cc or enemy interactions in this game beyond the basic action game ones and maybe the fact that you can use fire to explode bomb guys

Grandia 2
Riviera: The Promised Land
The Last Remnant

Had good combat systems IMO.
Most other JRPGs I tried were dissapointing.

one of the most shallow combat systems ever made actually. it makes people think it's smart because of how the simon days things synergize like how you link arts from auto attacks or later arts into other arts, but there are actually zero meaningful interactions

but at least it's not as braindead as torna (which unsurprisingly the average xenoblade 2 tard thinks has better combat even though all strategizing around the orbs is completely absent now)

Silence, Rebirthfaggot.

rebirth is not a good video game, and also you're making yourself look like even more of a clown with your zero effort response. how am I supposed to trust you that you have any idea what you're talking about? pro tip: you don't. you just respond to impulses

There's a fair few. Another example is elemental boss and using his own instant ability to clear his elemental mines. Quite often enemies are weak to the instant abilities they use against you like bars with the air tornado. Beyond that there's just an incredibly fun offense/defence game going on even without considering classes and all the synergy autism you get into post base game

To add to this I'd argue that sop has a better boss roster than nioh and is the real highlight. Every boss feels fair except the tentacle nigger

but there are actually zero meaningful interactions

...?

the director's meltdown online

It'll be fine. Mahler is just a drama queen who is emotionally invested in the game and is in the CEO position after they went independent so he has nobody above him to tell him to shut up
The whole funding palava was just a message on discord from Mahler, who talks about the game on discord with the players all the time, but was picked up by the gaming media who treated a discord message like a press statement. He then lashed out at media shitrags for turning it into an announcement after they all just ran the discord message without even asking him for comment. Everybody in this story is retarded but one of them is a talented designer making a game he wants to play and the rest of them are transvestites with women's studies degrees employed by Californian media as a daycare system for the dysfunctional children of the wealthy

at least you didn't say xenoblade 3 which really is just about shoving the square block in the square hole

The thing you should have read is that you need to disable all the skills you don't want to see your characters use.
And just like that your healer heals, your mage mages and your warriors do special attacks.

No idea if 2 is better, but while the first game had a good combat system, it was also easy as shit and you needed to hold back to not outlevel all of the content.

Gloria and Blaze never ever

Bless, love how the combo system alone enables at least 4 different strategies around them. DLC also introduced (a dumbed down but still cool version of) overdrive from X, allowing you to play around with blades that aren't particularly strong in chains but can dish out solid DPS with arts and lv3/4 specials,

Looks cool, but I'm sure that wont get old after 5 minutes.

Keep LotD out of your tranny obsessed mouth. Your toxic zoomer nonsense isn't welcome here.

what you're looking at isn't actually cutescene attacks, they're actually in real time. the positioning element keeps things fresh.

that said, the game is 80% combat so I wouldn't blame someone for thinking it gets repetitive, but I don't think it's because all you do is look at panty shots during cutscene attacks

parasite eve 1 for obvious reasons
phantasy star portable 1 for focusing on positioning instead of clutches like dodging and blocking

for focusing on positioning instead of clutches like dodging and blocking

always makes my ears perk up, I'll check it out

Oh yeah I forgot about Overdrive. I loved how it propped up weaker blades, while being a strong alternative to chain attacks. Between Overdrive and Fiora's crit boost skill, almost any blade can deal solid damage, even ones like Electra that have awful crit rates, no damage boosts, and slow arts with long cooldowns. You could say that power creep didn't REALLY leave any blade behind.

This game gave me choice paralysis. Especially in the labyrinth. Picking one job is easy, picking a supplementary job to help my first job and what affinities to invest in has me going through online spreadsheets to think of the most fun, effective build I can devise

i nearly 100% that game, the other game in recent memory was driver san francisco. Really had a good time with it. On the opposite spectrum, psp2 was dogshit and i never got farther than what 15% of the story. Sure psp1 is a bit easier and more forgiving because the game doesnt expect you to evade every single attack but the gameflow is really good. Perfect combination of diablo stat based combat and 3d environments.

resonance of fate

interesting combat

Nigga all you need to do is criss cross at the start, you made a triangle, hit Hero Run and you literally won most of the fucking game. This combat isn't interesting, it's shockingly more shallow than it looks. I remember for years niggas would say "Oh you gotta fucking be a geometric WIZARD to play this shit!" and uh, you don't. You wanna solve Resonance of Fate? I just told you how but here you go.

Grab whoever is on the left of your center character

Make them run to the far right so their run crosses the right character's line, gain a point

now do the same for the right character, far left, gain another point

hit hero run

Congratulations, you now have a fat triangle to get the most time out of it and you have beaten the game. So deep. What a fucking joke.

Games that are action games with neat gimmicks and approaches

Wonderful 101, you control up to 101 heroes who can all unite to form weapons. You can control how large the weapon is which makes it deal huge damage.

Chaos Legion, typical action game except you control a legion to fight with you.

Astral Chain, extremely similar to Chaos Legion but better executed

the combat SYSTEM is very interesting, it just doesn't stick the landing

Wonderful 101, you control up to 101 heroes who can all unite to form weapons. You can control how large the weapon is which makes it deal huge damage.

ultra kino but across 4 play through attempts I have never beaten it. think the furthest I've gotten was just after wonder pink joined

Between Overdrive and Fiora's crit boost skill, almost any blade can deal solid damage, even ones like Electra that have awful crit rates, no damage boosts, and slow arts with long cooldowns.

Eh idk about that. Specifically Electra might be better at chains and only with a setup involving stacking fusion combos on topple to get damage caps on her first and second special, grab aggro, and you should be able to hold it for enough time to set up another chain.

If by "interesting" you mean the concept of "using real time character interaction in order to find ways to become stronger and synergize together" is interesting, then sure. I can agree. But the actual system itself is not. Is it unique? I wouldn't even say that. Far as I know, the concept of "building up damage and then dealing it in one blow" was literally already done with Dissidia by Square on the PSP, and that game is nearly infinitely more interactive and has an ACTUALLY interesting combat system compared to this shit. There is no "system" in ROF, just a couple of mechanics slapped together thinking they somehow make something of an idea of "gameplay".
Also the Bezels themselves are way too dimensional and have too big of a drawback once you lose them all that it's literally more like just finding out a way to use them all before you run out, because once you do, you may as well just pray and hope you saved right before hand or grab a real gun and do HP damage on your head.

W101 is a good idea except the draw gimmick only really works on Wii U and using it in other ports just felt really clunky and out of place. The actual combat itself felt a bit short and seems the game was much more focused on retarded maps and setpieces through them instead of actually refining the gameplay, and not to mention the dozens of fucking retarded mandatory minigames...
Never played Chaos Legion, but heard it was okay.
Played Astral Chain, DMC5 does it infinitely better. Too shallow in AC. Then again, the entire game is too shallow.

nigga you fucked up
the setup you described doesn't work

It involves something similar to it. Looking back at it I think it was actually the center character you started with since you can go either direction and then you can choose whoever to make the triangle. It's been like... 3 or so years since I played it, and I've had a horrible sleep schedule for the past 6 months. Bear with me, I promise I'm not making it up.

nah, as a matter of fact, the gimmick feels much better with the stick, especially once you get good and they essentially become command inputs

I'd rather just have a command or button for styles instead. I don't think I recall, but there isn't even a mechanic for drawing them perfectly, just the size of it. If they had that then sure, it could be worth it. But it just felt tedious after a while. It costs meter anyway, and there's a size cap, so they may as well have made it a regular input to make it flow better.

nah I think it's a good trade off where if you don't have enough time, you'll have to make do with a smaller weapon. it's actually a dynamic that is so clever and exists in no other action game, because no one's ever even thought of it

Nothing comes close

Because it's retarded and nearly impossible to conceive.

give me one reason why it's bad to reward the player for properly capitalising on openings or punishing them for not doing so

Besides super hot are there any FPS games with unique combat systems? I'm struggling to think of others that are more than just a gimmick weapon or level.

This and Press Turn

Children of the Sun

You are talking about two completely different subjects here, so if you wanna move goalposts just because playing "Drawn to Life" in an action game for a few seconds tickles you autism pickle so much, I'd rather you just leave the thread if you're gonna be biased.

Hyper Demon, which in my opinion is the best fps ever made, while I also recognise that not every fps should be like it. It's the most modular fps I've ever played

I'm not, because that's exactly what the command input nature the drawing essentially is, leads to.

umm leave if you're gonna be biased

first day as a human?

I once tried making a system just for the sake of it where you only play with the mouse, so mouse click to walk and run, to aim/shoot, reload, pick up weapon... the reload would work by using the mouse wheel while aiming and pressing the right combination for each reload.
It seemed to work well enough. A bit too gimmicky but it would also work well for slower paced combat and enemies. A change of pace.
It's just a side project so it won't evolve much from this anyways

that's quite cool, unfortunately the average person thinks when a game limits them it's because if a game design oversight "Umm wtf why can't Leon move while aiming and shooting in og RE4!?"

Naturally, aesthetics are important. If a game visually looks like a faggot game, then it's a faggot game, and it's gameplay is utterly irrelevant. It's trash and it will always be. By contrast, even a mediocre game will be elevated if the creators put cute girls in it. It's that simple.

megaman battle network 3

EX33 on Expert is about as hard as RoF base level difficulty. The big difference is that on RoF if you get put in a checkmate situation your shit is probably fucked. It’s hard making comebacks in the early game.

What a weird question

this is the kind of game where if you fuck up you might lose 2h of playtime

You got filtered

The magic system in Arx Fatalis has you drawing runes to cast spells, each rune has a meaning and there are secret spells you can figure out.
For example when you get the rune for ice you won't get any new spells in your spellbook, you'll have to swap it in to spells you already have such as the one for creating a fire projectile

Since I know almost nobody has played it I'm going to mention The Four Crystals of Trazere(or simply Legend in EU). It's a fairly simply isometric adventure/puzzle game and a lot of the combat is pretty basic(select your man, activate their ability, tell them who to attack or simply let them run around on auto pilot) but for a 33 year old game it has one of the most interesting magic systems I've ever seen and it's why I always spend most of my time controlling the wizard. You can essentially craft your own spells that range from something as simple as a basic fireball that shoots out directly in front of you to full-screen chaos with chain reactions from dozens of projectiles and explosions that will likely wipe out your party as well as an entire enemy army. The core of the system is somewhat basic since you only have so many runes(basically spell instructions) to deal with but with those you can create custom spells to handle realistically any situation and can even mix offensive magic and support magic into a single spell.

I'd argue Legend of Dragoon handles it better than E33 does. The latter just goes more in-depth with it.
I liked Eternal Sonata a lot, especially the way the combat continually evolved and removed more and more training wheels the more you progressed through the game and its NG+ allows you to have the full system right from the start. Unfortunately the game is also broken as fuck and once you figure out the busted shit it can be hard to not abuse it.

I literally beat the main story and postgame. That's how easy it is.

That doesn't even sound like a real game. Basic combat with "sword guy attacks with sword", but it also has a complex magic system that's like scribblenauts or smth?

quest 64 mogs all games ITT

Such a damn shame more devs didn't copy Grandia's combat system. To this day it remains my favorite jrpg combat system.

youtube.com/watch?v=8mWQid78s0E

Looks cool. Upload it somewhere, I want to try it out

quest 64

better than Valkyrie Profile

This game and that one sonic game that let you fight in little arenas were goated

what about this is interesting or unique?
not saying vindictus combat wasn't fun, or good, but there's really nothing about it that hadn't already been a staple of the action genre at the time it came out

Is this on pc? Looks better than what I have.

good fighting systems

I haven't played a game with an engaging and innovative combat system for a decade. Dark souls 1 was great for it's time, hate all you want.

The online and support components.
Having to do action combat with other people while managing some gimmick/tool in a boss fight for less skilled players is something I want to see more of in games.

Looks like it would be good for a horror game, cool shit

This game was the experimental midground that led to Resonance of Fate. They swapped out the Valkyrie Profile combos for drawing triangles and shooting guns, but almost everything else was kept.

So tb with qte?
Why is picrel so good looking? Regarding the triace game, it's not really a system that's thought through. Could've been implemented better, at least in hindsight.

The Last Remnant

Is this the game with the overall level scaling, similar to demon souls world score?

Loved this game, but it has a lot to process. I should replay it at some point since I never got the good endings.
Sting recently released an RTS bullet hell Touhou fangame too, but it doesn't look like it kept any of the artistry or complexity that pulled me into KitN.

i really like how this game's combat system is built primarily around not overextending

even though it's by no means difficult and i've played through it three times i sometimes still get too cocky and eat shit in fights that should be no trouble at all

now that's some unappealing as hell art, wouldn't be surprised if this sold nothing at all, I'll check it out however

Still waiting for the english remastered release...

what you do before battle matters (baiting/grouping foes, pre-gaming damage and status effects, getting pre-emptive strikes)

everything you do during battle matters (position management and manipulation, controlling foes' behavior with on-field traps, switching equipment to gain an edge, and more)

The sheer density of meaningful choices that have both an immediate impact and a resounding impact you'll feel hours later is incredible in Dragon Quarter since you can't out-grind your woes, can't magically make new resources materialize when you start running low, can't heal up at inns for cheap.
Too bad it filtered jarpig sloppers so hard that we will never see another game like it ever again.

Legitimately good combat system held back by the shit game surrounding it and redundant spells because the devs were short on time.

Yeah, it was later patched in the original game to be less bad and then reworked for the remake, but I think that's didn't fix it.

But as long as you don't do excessive grinding until later in the game you are fine.

Troubleshooters has one of the best strategy RPG combat systems and I wish it were popular enough that people would steal its AT gimmick.

I had such high hopes for Banner Saga, man. The idea of marching your group of characters (who can all die) through the end of the world over the length of a trilogy was so appealing.

At least the landscapes were pretty to look at.

LoD sucks so fucking much. Man.
It really made me appreciate the effort that goes into mario and luigi/paper mario to make the time hits fun. Seriusly, you can't just slap time hits and expect your combat to magically be better.
Because you jsut turn every combat into a slog.

The first game was pure kino.
For some reason i cant remember anything about the other 2.

I like how each character is specialized in dealing with a certain kind of enemy and you can freely swap them in and out of your party mid-battle

that game had potential, if any game needs a remake it's quest 64 or as it is known in europe, holy magic century, which is a way better name.

Literally no JRPG with juggling is bad besides maybe the first Project X Zone. Endless Frontier? Tales of Vesperia and Destiny DC? Ar tonelico 2? Baldr Sky? TWEWY? Valkyrie Profile? All incredible. If your game has juggling it's ludo. jugglvdo

Did somebody say... Interesting?

combat when farming was too long and annoying, that's where it failed for me as a JRPG.
it's a nice "anime game" tho, and making guns with 12 silencers and 7 scopes was funny

Two basically splits the story into two parties, whoever survived 1 heading to a new redoubt, and then a band of mercenaries who have to escort the body of the bad guy from one to the ocean and toss him in.

Three is just the Dredge are just trying to live too and escape a GREATER evil. and two characters admitting everything is their fault before they fix it with a rushed ending.

W101 kind of sucks to play on the Wii U because you don't get enough buttons to sanely control the liner and control the action at the same time.
A keyboard and a drawing tablet, though?

But as long as you don't do excessive grinding until later in the game you are fine.

In theory perfect, as grind is shit. If you do that, you basically have a set level for each encounter, effectively making the Co cept of leveling purely cosmetic, at least for the stats. Literally an illusion. The sole reason under and over leveled has to be possible in rpg.

if you bump up the difficulty enemy armor starts mattering a lot and you end up running through a lot of your 8th-9th grade geometry just to find valid angles that let you finish battles in a sane time frame without getting absolutely ass raped as soon as you land

Why aren't swapping characters used more often by devs?

swapping classes is cooler

It's DEAD

Hard to integrate, especially in real-time games. Lock-and-key weaknesses risk becoming obnoxious in reflex-test games.
Also hard to balance.

Ruina's card combat was a cool take on the genre. Clashing turned it from less of a deckbuilder and more into a card battler which helps it stand out from the ocean of indie card games

sonic heroes did it

w101 did it

Xenosaga 2 had the skeleton of a good system where you have a stock system to store turns, a boost system to cheat in extra turns, and rolling set of bonuses that cycle each turn between a wild card, crit up, boost up, and exp up to give you an incentive to set up your turns on the right bonus. But the game fucked up the numerical balance and enemies have way too much hp until you figure out what element combo they're 5x weak too so that becomes the focus of combat instead.

I don't get the panty obsession. Everyone wears underwear. Wouldn't you rather that there be nothing at all?

Love Will of the Prescript

it's a heterosexual men thing, you wouldn't get it

It's hotter to leave room to imagine what it's like instead to put it all on clear display.

I will hunt down and slowly kill every single one of you. Yes, the story of Legend of Dragoon was pretty standard for an Asian RPG, but it was excellently written and expressed. The combat also was miles ahead of similar games at the time.

I love Astral Chain but part of me desires that the Chains were AI controlled and the combat from a human perspective were more fleshed out, is the same problem that pick related had, Controlling Cheshire is the biggest downside of this game.

Underrail because of the enemy design. No matter your class there is some enemy type or area that will give you problems.

ToME4 just because of the different damage types, status effects, skills and classes. Getting fearscaped by demons, managing your time paradox and vomiting blight and disease everywhere is just fun.

Magicka for the real time spell casting that is hard to do and easy to fuck up.

The battle network series in general, even BN4 has great combat system, its problems lies somewhere else

dude just build a super specific folder to beat a specific boss

just keep restarting until you get exactly the chips you need for your 1HKO program advances to show up

I appreciate and respect the core ideas behind MMBN but let's be real, the battle system has some hard limitations on what it can do to facilitate actual high-skill play and the vast majority of bosses/superbosses fall to the same cheesy shit because non-cheese and playing straight simply does not work against them.

Why? There'd be absolutely zero point to the games otherwise. It's cool they force you to symmetrically control two different motor cores, more games should do it, an iS: Internal Section or Dyad-ish tube shooter with a well fledged out gimmick that follows the principle would be the tightest shit ever.
Or a shooter. I'm actually surprised Sol Cresta doesn't try making you actually control 2/3 ships at once.

Yeah the cards in BN have the unfortunate aspect of completely taking control away from you instead of enhancing it. The StarForce games are even worse about this.

It's a bit more complicated as the game calculates, battle rank which influences enemy strengt and growth rates with depend on strength differences seperately.

... Why not both?
It's even rare in tb games

yeah it does suck that the post game, getting the sp chips and all that pretty much devolve in you getting lucky with the chips you get on your first turn, never had to build super specific folders though, that was an issue with every game after bn3 because there are less chips to choose from ESPECIALLY in bn4

Would you say more games should have a polished version of this

... Why not both?

it'd be meaninglessly redundant desu

I'd appreciate if sting went back to developing actual games and not just porting them. Or at least port baroque classic to PC/global.

I disagree. Companions that can be customised are awesome.

I just want Blaze and Gloria

yeah true. I was talking specifically about mid battle swapping. swapping both characters AND classes freely during battle sounds like way too much cognitive load for comfort and most of it is redundant

ATB battle system where every action drains a set amount of the bar, buffs and debuffs on a character decay per action taken, you're given a party of 12 but only an active party of 4, and characters tend to have defined roles. Battles as a result involve a ton of party management, making sure glass cannons get in to do damage but get out before the boss can retaliate, buffs get up and stay up where they're needed, and characters with low ATB are replaced by someone who can act sooner. Lots of moving parts, and the boss fights expect you to use them well.

Gloria is fun but not essential. And I think there's a Blaze TL out there somewhere, of admittedly pretty bad quality though.

Eh no, you can only make that system work as a player if you spoiler yourself and read the wiki.

Nothing hurts more than getting an interesting character later, but not being able to advance him in a meaningful way because you grinded too much.

The SaGa series exists, TLR is an offshoot of that series and its BR version is one of the worse out there.

Natural fucking Doctrine for ps3/vita
The game measures distance between your characters, distance from walls, enemies, gives you various bonuses based on those, checks your formation (and there are no formations in this game, you move all your characters manually) and gives various skills and bonuses and penalties based on positions. For example putting your archer behind your shield guy will give him a bonus to defense even if there is no "defend" action.

Are SaGa games actually designed to be interesting or do they just look interesting? What I'm saying is an RPG is nothing without actually interesting design. If anything the more open ended the base mechanics are the better, it's all about how encounters and classes and dungeons and boss fights are laid out and how hard you can push these systems in concert with this purposeful design to actually have some fun. Part of the reason a good deal of JRPGs suck is that they don't try hard enough design wise and hope the computer does its thing. But balancing chaos with intent and making this intent clear and challenging and inherently rewarding seems to be the mark of a well designed role playing game. It's easier to do this in genres like dungeon crawlers or strategy RPGs.

Looks fun, anything I should know about it?

worse out there

only on the original 360 version, they fixed it with the pc release

SaGa's the definition of open ended design so I guess you'd like at least some of them.
Their problem is that the series' creator is a massive tabletop autist who loves to come up with experimental shit that inevitably pisses most people off, for instance the latest mainline game constantly alters the content of the main campaign with every NG+ cycles so you're never repeating the same quests, and that includes the content of the main quest as well.
As for fights, I think it's excellent mechanically precisely because the game is wholly open ended not only in terms of progression but also in terms of character building, there's no hard classes but rather a freeform development system like in FF2 where characters gain stats depending on what you do with them, then there's skill sparking, formations, races that work completely differently from each other if the game features them, it's really good.

WHERE THE FUCK CAN I FIND A RESONANCE OF FATE COPY FOR MY 360 THAT ISN'T FUCKING OVERPRICED TO SHIT IT'S BEEN 15 YEARS

just buy the pc port

uhhh if you make the game harder for yourself then it's difficult bro!

That's absolutely lazy fucking design and I refuse to stand for it. You didn't make me change how I view the game, just forced me to play by arbitrary rules. If the game had actual design for gameplay put into it you wouldn't need to worry about that bullshit.

The combat also was miles ahead of similar games

Every addition just deals damage and gains SP in varying amounts. No status ailments, buffs, debuffs or extra effects of any kind. When every fight is just about spamming additions and items because Dragoon form is weak it becomes as simple and generic as it gets.

I agree that most tri ace games should have one default difficulty, the hardest one or second-to-hardest for ng+ goodies. that'd filter way too many retards though

The combat also was miles ahead of similar games at the time.

It's the opposite, the combat was the definition of mashing X, there's literally no nuance to anything, it's a rhythm minigame where nothing matters but getting the timing of your additions down.
Worst part of all of this is that there's even an accessories that completely automates that part, even Final Fantasy games were mechanically deeper than Legend of Dragoon, there's a lot of reasons why it was and still is considered a kusoge.

No, no qte, action pints are paoints to spend for actions, you get 100 by default, if you spend 50 or less you get your turn twice as fast, if you spend more you get a lot of actions in a turn but you can get anal raped by enemies spawning and taking their turn before you can do anything, and without healing, like ever without sacrificing another character of the same level means you get easily crippled if you use points willy nilly.

Though not really too much different than most top-down shooters, Synthetik had magazine ejection as part of a mandatory two-step process in reloading. Weapons build up heat as well to your benefit or detriment, many secondary and tertiary effects in the game may trigger, and extra difficulty modifiers might require you to be more aware of these mechanics like making the reload window randomized.

Despite adding extra steps it actually flows pretty well. Only its (inferior for other reasons) sequel does per-round reloads for weapons like shotguns.

Not even to mention, YOU expect ME to play that god awful PRESENT GIVING CHAPTER -AGAIN-? ON NINE MORE DIFFICULTIES!? Go through losing Leanne AGAIN FOR A WHOLE CHAPTER? NINE MORE TIMES? You must be out your fucking mind! I'd call anyone who played Zenith in ROF a genuine fucking lunatic who had nothing better to do.

slopyrinth of 2hu

interesting combat system

lol. lmao, even. not even a proper DRPG due to the isometric crap, either. Absolute proof that touhou fans are fucking delusional and will slurp up any slop you put in front of them and give it the +5 "touhou bonus"

The combat also was miles ahead of similar games at the time.

No it wasn't.
The materia is leagues more complex than addition. So was the junction system.
Hell, Vagrant Story would do time hits better by adding different effects to them and being able to change on the fly.
Fucking paper mario would release a year later and figure out that inputs have to be varied, serve different purposes AND BE QUICK for such systems to be fun.

But jesus christ it became way too much by the end where you have to make 50+ decks that counter 50+ enemies each with multiple passives that can also have multiple phases.

desu if it weren't for no pantsu the chapter would be cute. like the ffta snowball fight as a real thing.
synthetik feels pretty tight to play. no idea how they managed the vibe of metal clashing at subsonic speeds so right for a first attempt

i really like how this game's combat system is built primarily around not overextending

Is it? For me it's all about creating distance at the right time and close the gap quickly with perfect opening, rinse repeat. I guess that's the safest way to play because Pseudo is a sticc that can't stunlock anyone in that game..

Also even if you know what enemies are weak to every battle is a massive chore.

Man fuck off. Resonance of Fate is literally the worst game I’ve played in 30 years of gaming. I regret completing that piece of shit game.

It's still way more involved, requiring more thinking and skill, than literally any other JRPG at the time. It's not perfect, but it was pretty fucking good, and like I said, better than the rest.

I'm really just asking because I've been going through a bunch of blobbers lately and I've got to say the dungeon design for Dungeon Travelers 2 is genuinely very tight. Satisfyingly so. Mine fields, trap doors, invisible doors, one-way passes, shortcuts, no melee/magic zones, dark zones, pitfalls, geometric map messages... There's a feeling you're being fucked with by an autistic slant-eyed game master with thousands of excel sheets in a way that's sadistic but still relatively on babby tier versus that guy's own crazy Wizardry IV OC campaign or something and it made me realize how important purposeful design is to a good RPG experience.

Literal rock paper scissors.
Enemies attack in fixed patters that can shut down entirely by reacting accordingly. What makes the game challenging is that:
1, you can't see all the attack sequence, just three attacks at best.
2, the game doesn't track the patterns, (you) have to do that, either by a notebook or a spreadsheet.
So the game becomes a matter of doing educated guesses based on what attacks the enemis do and how they fit on your recorded patterns.
It's really original, well thought out and pretty imaginative, and the game shines with caster, due to having to keep track of mana, blocks to not die and match magic attacks to get extra damage.
It's absolutely not for everyone. But it's pretty cool and one of my favorite systems.

more polished

saga

Kek. I do like Rs2 and 3, but it's anything, certainly not polished.

Come to think of it, romancing saga 2 could easily be remade with today's tech by a single person, yet we have nothing.

It's still way more involved, requiring more thinking and skill, than literally any other JRPG at the time

You're just saying you never played any other JRPG at the time

God, I love pantyshots.

Unsure if that is a decent system.

Come to think of it, romancing saga 2 could easily be remade with today's tech by a single person, yet we have nothing.

type Romancing SaGa in Steam and see the results

RS2 BR alone is better than TLR's BR purely because enemies actually change with the BR ladder instead of getting a stat boost.
RS2 in general is way more complex than TLR, the campaign alone blows TLR's away and that's a SNES game against a 360 game, TLR is a massive step back compared to actual SaGa games and was designed like that on purpose, it was supposed to be babby's first SaGa.

materia... junction... Vagrant Story

The problem is none of these really impact the way you play the game. For FF7 at the end of the day you're still just spamming your strongest attack and LB, for FF8 you're just pumping your stats and actively ignoring the magic system aside from Aura and Meltdown and mashing triangle until you can LB, in Vagrant Story you're subject to autism grinding and unintuitive farming to set up a very specific set of attributes that you will never get through organic play to deal with specific enemies.

Yes these systems are more complex than LoD's "equip weapon of damage, armor of mitigation and accessory of +speed" but they do nothing to change the actual gameplay. That's where LoD excelled. That's the sort of shit that needs to happen for turn-based games to stay relevant as has been proven by successful turn-based games over the past year. It doesn't matter how much depth there is under the hood if it amounts to entering battle and selecting the "big damage" command over and over with no further interaction.

I gave it a shot, reached the second boss, but I stopped because I just had no idea who any of my characters were. The game tells you that you should care about them and each sacrifice is supposed to be a heavy toll (a bit like Darkest Dungeon), but they all looked the fucking same. black-and-white-and-red artstyle made them even more undistinguishable from one another.

You're just spamming your strongest attack and LB

And your 'strongest attack' at the time could be-

resisted by your target (in turn, heals them)

is a massive MP burner

Target can only be hit by PHYS/MAG

LB I guess you could make an argument for, but that's hardly 'spammable', that part is hyperbolic.

press X to attack

heal sometimes

riveting

What happened to the remake? It was supposed to release this year but they’re still completely silent about it

That's where LoD excelled.

OK dude but wanna know what else Legend of Dragoon excelled at? Being fucking boring.
FF7/FF8 were fun to play even if they weren't doing anything special to advance the jarpig genre, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Based take
Real recognizes real

It was supposed to release this year but they’re still completely silent about it

Trust the plan, end of the year release.

Minigames are not the answer. They're a midwit trap. They actively make the games worse because you're now spending longer selecting a menu for big damage and watching the stupid fucking animation play like a turbonigger and maybe parry an attack or two in a 500ms window like triplehypermegacyberniggercattle who only needs the IDEA of interaction and some flashy visual feedback to get fucking dopamine holy fucking shit go kill yourself you retarded subhuman you actively make the world a worse fucking place

but they do nothing to change the actual gameplay. That's where LoD excelled.

By being even more braindead and completely throwing what little RPG mechanics it could have had out of the window?
Are you serious?

The only thing I’ve heard about this game is that it has one of the most bullshit difficulty curves in its genre and that kind of scares me

I’m not really that hardcore

It doesn't matter how much depth there is under the hood if it amounts to entering battle and selecting the "big damage" command over and over with no further interaction.

Yes it fucking does. Because to get to that big damage, you need to work your way through the systems. THAT's why these games are rewarding, when you overcome a boss with a creative strategy or a unique set up and not just because your level is higher.
But then again, the average JRPG player is a fucking retard.

all this unrelated screeching

as a show of good faith I'll give you one chance to name a game that did its battle system better before I call you a retard

LB I guess you could make an argument for, but that's hardly 'spammable'

Anon the meta of FF8 is literally staying as low level as possible so you can junction some easily accessible shit like Curaga to your HP so even when sitting at 1k health you're still in the yellow and get the LB command every single turn.

wholly subjective

Minigames are not the answer. They're a midwit trap.

I realize you have a fragile ego and you think being contrarian is a personality but shitting yourself like this isn't going to change the fact turn-based RPGs are only on the upswing specifically because of games that provide interaction during battle beyond navigating menus and battle strategies that take place in combat and not in a spreadsheet.
You honestly think mashing X is more braindead than timing X presses? That was a rhetorical question. Don't bother replying, I'm objectively correct.

It's not that hardcore. It's not hard, it's punishing of every fuck up you make. But not bullshit hard.

Yes it fucking does.

You could make an argument for some games. You could not make that argument for FF7/FF8/VS.

ctrl+f exan

you are all stupid. play physics based gamed like Exanima not animation slop

>Anon the meta of FF8

You started with-

> For FF7 at the end of the day you're still just spamming your strongest attack and LB

You're not juggling these replies well.

If you want to talk about FF7 specifically you need to mention FF7 specifically, not quote a mechanic which has appeared in numerous entries. Even then FF7 is the game where you can chain limit breaks multiple times in a single turn through the materia system.

You're not applying critical thinking very well.

Nothing tickles the brain like FF7R's pressure/stagger.

Pressure is break, and makes most enemies manipulable

Stagger is meter management payoff

It's not just the flow of this single dynamic that's great, either. The way basic attacks and synergy attacks build ATB creates this window of action-time that's separate from ability-spam.
The abilities are also pretty damn good given the range of their follow-through effects.
But it's not perfect. If I could add a few things, it would be something like:

Dedicated jump e.g. at the end of a dodge

Aerial/Ability/Basic attacks form RPS system, with bonuses for attacking the right stance

Basic magic applies stacks of debuffs, so it's more useful than just for hitting weaknesses

You honestly think mashing X is more braindead than timing X presses?

If I wanted to mash X I'd play something that does it well like Valkyrie Profile rather than dogshit like Legend of Dragoon, or I'd play a proper ARPG like Tales of Eternia, if I wanted a good turn based PS1 RPG I'd play SaGa Frontier or Front Mission 2.
Legend of Dragoon is a dumpster fire that does nothing well, it's the bottom of the barrel of the generation together with other dogshit like Eternal Roman, Quest 64 or Beyond the Beyond.

For something that started out as a bolt-action simulator it's certainly an interesting development. Shit can feel frantic and satisfying, the second game still in development just doesn't hit it. Apparently it's got a fuckhuge update available in the beta branch but I'll see where that ends up.

dodging

That's a concession. I accept. Thanks for making this easy.

nothing tickles the brain like boring, prescribed gameplay

Players like (You) who enjoyed FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH also enjoyed:

Dodging what?
You create scenarios that only exist in your mind by implying that every turn based game is dogshit like Final Fantasy, which as bad as it is is still better than LoD for a long list of reasons.
Just because you like to eat shit doesn't mean you're right, stay in your pigpen.

7 Remake unironically has better combat than Rebirth.
Simply because the parry as an answer to everything ruins the toolsets and strategy.

Dodging what?

The question. Are you going to answer it or not? If you refuse to give a simple yes or no answer you concede.

You forgot to mention the turn chaining and making sure your enemies don't have the opening to chain their turns too.
And each party member had unique builds that you had to tailor for different types of enemies and "glue" between allies. And when you think you've figured it out, you get the weird fuck weapons that change the entire dynamic.
It's one of the best SRPGs really, a shame that it got panned so hard the producer made nothing but braindead games afterwards (God Wars, Monark, Metal Max Xeno Reborn)

Vagrant Story

Best graphics on the PSX

One of the best story too

Make some stupidly retarded mechanics for no reason

I'm still pissed off to it, we could've gotten vidya inspired by the greats if it became successfull but instead we're here fellating how FF8 was good enough.

Last Ranker

Cool thread

this a mod? or is the pc version just censored?

it's the outfit

Does the remaster of RoF add anything new? I platinum'd the game a while back and not sure if I should get it.

I love ImageEpoch so much, brother.

kinda wish there was something like BRS at 2x the speed plus ATB

every time I make a thread, it's the only good thread on Anon Babble.

you're competing with steam chart threads, schizo spams, bots and twitter screenshots, not very hard to do.

JRPG

GRIND
GRIND
GRIND
GRIND
next area
GRIND
GRIND
GRIND
GRIND
next area

etc. no thanks. Games like Legend of Dragoon and Expedition 33 are more skill based, while the vast majority of JRPGs don't need skill or intelligence, they just want you to do repetitive motions for 15 hours at a time before you're allowed to do the same bullshit in the next area.

He has to grind

LMAOOOO

oh whoops, forgot I could just input the same 5 commands in every single random battle

And when that doesn't work you fucking GRIND. ROFL pathetic.

The fact that you need to grind to beat games already means you lack basic skills so your claim is pathetic

That's the Mother (completely red character) gaslighting to avoid you to keep sending her daughters to the slaughter, the only thing you have to keep in mind about them is what class they are: melee, tanks, ranged

Imagine x-com if only shooting or only moving in your turn got that character's turn faster.
Small turns don't get you flanked, big ones you'll mostly use as a do-or-die to get out of shitty situatiions or make some breakthoughs.

anime is gay. it's just cartoons for Asians. keep coping.

cutscene

interesting combat

it's not a cutscene. the real time attack animations just get stylish angles.

reach an encounter you can't beat with basic attacks

grind to out level it instead of using all of your tools

later complain that the game is boring and grindy

Why does this always happen

not gonna waste my elixers on some random faggot.

Monster Hunter sits on a throne of skulls for good reason. Frontier and Sunbreak are the absolute peak for most weapons.
Wilds isn't bad but has some baffling decisions

Doesn't work in SMT, can't outgrind Demons not learning new spells/not scaling. Start fusing shit.

Instead you will spend an hour grinding but hey at least you didn't use a common item!

nah, nu MH sucks ass and is devolving into iframe slop instead of positioning kino

frontier was already iframe ludo

Rune drawing is a fun gimmick I wish was used more. LostMagic was a DS RTS that had you play a mage who directed monsters to autoattack, while the MC had to draw 1-2 runes in any combination or 3 runes in specific combinations to cast from a pool of nearly 400 spells. Mostly just a cute gimmick for the story mode, but being able to remember relevant spells and draw them quickly and cleanly (fuck dark3) mattered in pvp.

Make one of the most unique and un-orthodx strategic combat for a turn based game

Get review bombed because target audience is to retarded to understand the gimmick

One of many proofs that jRPGfags are mouth breathers who don't play real vidya games.

Game tricks you into grinding without making it feel like it

What the name Anon Babble?

Match-3 but you send armies and build walls against each other in the flavor of Might and Magic

The few jarpiggers who actually play their games lapped this up pretty cleanly though. What's a real shame is that the King Crimson song in the credits got taken out of the international release. Cool ass game.

Usually when a game makes me grind, I drop it.
I pushed through for this one, but I still bitch about it to this day.

Every gameplay loop a game implements is technically a grind.

Monopoly but with monsters

movement points is tied to health

Any games that do this?

I don't think so. Closest I can think is Star Ocean 3's MP is a second health bar thing. There's a bunch of games with less HP for more speed passives though

If you want to be reductive about it, I guess. When you're consistently pushing forward with story or map exploration % it's fun, when you're stuck doing repetitive tasks in one spot for number go up purposes or praying for an elusive drop it's shit. Even with luck pumped I got screwed on weapons, boards, and love drops, and while you can technically gitgud for 10+ minute boss fights at low levels there's at least one fight in postscript that feels like too much of a shitshow without a certain amount of damage output.

best I can do is health points tied to movement, also don't play this

If you haven't played it yet, now is the great time to redeem yourself.

Kinda dropped 1 because it was so grindy.

1 and 2 were neat, but I didn't play 3 and I'm paranoid about Ratatan taking after 3. Was 3 actually bad, or do people just dislike it because it was different?

hold down button to sprint

drains HP because it just does

terrible fucking game btw

I guess every Mystery Dungeon clone once you're starving desu

games with interesting combat systems

You already posted the best one.

LoD sucks so fucking much. Man.

I'm an oldfag, and I agree with this. I never understood the LoD love. Shit is SLOW AS FUCK and so god damn annoying, always has been.

animation/hitbox/hurtbox driven gameplay

the most basic concepts of real time combat design

first thing he tries to attribute it to is Souls

I hate fromdrones.

Actually, Transistor was pretty cool. The default mode, I guess you could say, is like proto-Hades combat (same company), but you can go into like a "turn-based" sort of mode where you choose your actions, almost like the VATS system from fallout, but an action game. You can also combine your attacks in interesting ways. Like, literally combine the attacks. Like there is a skill where you shoot an arrow kinda, and there is also a bomb skill, and you can combine the arrow and the bomb skill to shoot a bomb at the enemy. That kind of thing.

The only game from these guys that I think actually plays tightly is Pyre. It's also by far their most interesting one.

I bought this game at launch and have under 1 hour in it.

Pyre is neat. I liked it, but I hesitate to recommend it because it's mostly a VN with only light gameplay elements. Coincidentally, NFL Blitz is the only sports game I've ever liked.

God I miss NFL Blitz even if the AI cheated like fuck as soon as you pulled ahead.

The only reason people still play PSO2 to this day is because no game comes close to its combat. Tell me one game that feels like Luster or Slayer.

PSO2

combat

No, people still play it because of sunk cost and the legitimately good character customization.

Was 3 actually bad, or do people just dislike it because it was different?

I think it's by no means a bad game, just different. It's just wonky due to being focused a bit too much on multiplayer, so the single player part ended up a bit unbalanced. Some people didn't like the focus on the uber hero and that it's less of a rythm army builder and more of a 4 niggas in a row (with rythm).
If you can bear with it's quirks, it's a very epic game and a solid conclusion to the franchise.
youtu.be/kzwWgwJPZ64?si=aqP9lkxeI4445uNQ
youtu.be/tmDEHUF12HI?si=4wjn_qTNS48rmR7x

Worldless was fantastic.

I just look at a game with this few variables and wonder why it even had to be turn based.

Nothing E33 does is anything new the only difference is that it is literally normalfag's first JRPG.

Be real with me, is this pretty much just E33's combat? I heard of this game, but never played it. Looks like it's basically E33's combat.

pretty much just E33's combat?

Ateler Ryza is E33 combat without budget

Nah, in E33 you have a party, you are stationary, attack via menus, and there's AP instead of a timer. The defense turn is similar though.

It's fundamentally that, if you want to get down to it: turn-based with parrying and dodging. But instead of an action point system when it's someone's turn, it's time allotted for real time action gameplay where there are weaknesses for the enemy and yourself, comboing and juggling, interrupting enemy turns, extending your own turn, character switching and assists, battlefield obstacles, etc. It does a lot more to shake up the turn-based system than just adding QTEs to it.

memoslop

fantastic

lol. lmao.

Oh shit, mein nigger!! I didn't even see it.
I absolutely love how this game tries to erase all jRPG sins like: enemy packs attacking in 1v1s instead of as a whole group, guns shooting sponge bullet, trivializing mana resource by stock pilling magic pots, ressurection amulets, over-level grinding, 90 degree attack/movement dead zones etc.
It's really interesting that devs also tried to have each level have it's own unique structure and gimmick, forcing player to think more and more strategically each time.

It really was one of it's kind. The only major downside was tenaciously slow movement system.

I'll check it out, thanks. Looks neat.

this is supposed to be one of the most needlessly complex and unfun jrpgs in existence.

I actually stopped playing this early on because the combat seemed boring, but maybe I didn't give it a proper chance.

Says who? I'm not the OP and I thought it was fun. It's pretty simple once you understand it, but it takes a lot to get there.

it's fun and also not that complex. it's just that you need to be walked through how you're supposed to play once to actually see what it's about, which is what the 20 arena tutorials do, you don't need to memorize anything either, it's pretty straight forward

needlessly complex

nigga its just pythagoras with hood ass gun customization

If you see a description like that then you know the game is gonna be good.
After all, even battleships is more complex then your every day jrpg.

tri-Ace

using 3 characters to make a triangle is the best thing you can do

Based.

I liked Xenoblade 1’s mmo-lite combat, but it was kind of shallow once you learned it. Only enemies you really built for were with spike.
By the way, fuck RPGs that do that. Ones where you’re basically gonna lose the fight first because they have some bullshit retarded mechanic that you’d have no way of inferring or adapting to beforehand.

Panzer dragoon saga had really good combat. There's a ranking system which scales your rewards and the combat is all about understanding enemy behaviors, setting up the vulnerable positions and understanding how different enemy combos factor into the 4 positions and how enemies also counter your movements. Being able to store turns for different tiers of abilities and knowing the windows to charge turns creates a ton of risk reward windows to consider. Didn't even mention the dragon forms and that's a whole other subsystem to consider.

Last time I was in this thread someone recommended this to me.
Anybody knows if this any good?

Only played 2 for a bit and fuck that game for hiding damage formulas.

It's okay, basically a SaGa spinoff.

game made with triangles is all about making triangles

enlightened

it's okay. you can get it for like 3$ on PSN sale days

NIETZSCHE LOOKS LIKE THIS?

Good to see some Worldless love, it was a fun 12 hours. I'm still mad beating the extra boss didn't unlock a true end.

The LoT series is great, looking forward to 3's full release. I don't much like the complexity creep that started in 2 in some areas (do we really need 8 different status ailments? do we really need item crafting?) but I'm sure 3peso will cook up some juicy bosses again.

How do I get good? By the time the tutorial ends I already forget half the stuff that's going on and all I do is place the characters away from each other for some bonus.

this is just a way shittier Receiver

god this game sucked so fucking much

Psi-Ops. You throw shit or set in on fire.

Every gameplay loop a game implements is technically a grind.

This comment typifies these discussions, which are flooded by intellectually insecure anons manically reducing everything down to 1s and 0s, because god forbid something be worthy of their time.

Deception IV is fun: you set up a bunch of traps and have to combo the enemy around the map and into stage effects

For me, it was the Judgement Ring system from Shadow Hearts.

only in the last 2 or 3 dungeons, where they start having way too much hp even with the right weakness to pad out the otherwise short game. Before that you can kill things quickly by focusing on the boost bonus that gives 3x boost per attack. You normally get 20% of a boost per attack so even a simple single stock into boost onto the bonus gives you 120% of a boost charge back, ending up a net positive while also doing combo damage.

Oh hey, you're right. I guess I just got bored of it.

The first game had amazing setpieces, I thought. Only the gameplay was total shit. I was hoping the second would fix it up and then I'd be looking at a game for the ages but nah, instead they left shitty parts as they had been, and ruined even the parts that used to be good. Disappointing.

Little Witch Nobeta of all games actually handles this pretty well. Damage can be avoided by dodging, parrying, moving, jumping, and attacking. The best option depends entirely on the enemy and the situation, with each option producing variable results from counter attack opportunity to not working at all.

When it comes to parrying, doing so when you are surrounded by enemies still sees you vulnerable and surrounded by enemies. There is even a boss where parrying, running, jumping, moving, and dodging all get you killed.

The game could've done with more battlefield designs, but considering I can hardly stand jrpgs, I beat it twice in one go (second time was more of a victory lap and I think postgame unlocks) and still felt some dopamine hits from the combat.

It's most certainly worth noting that battlefields have levels (as in upstairs/downstairs that you can cross during attacks/actions), walls that can serve as cover for both you and the enemy, and barrels (I don't recall if they were just explosive or there were other types as well).

BEHOLD

Nobody said anything about good combat, anons are just sharing combat that they found didn't conform to most other games.

This game had some interesting things going for it, but I think limiting the gameplay to only the MCs with other characters being supporting roles hurt it. Compared to Tales of it didn't draw in any real crowd.

yea no

This any good compared to Lunar 1 and 2?

I saved up my allowance and bought a DS specifically for this game because I was such a massive fan of the Lunar series. Never been so disappointed in my life

Oh anon. If only you knew.

Scratch damage? Looks gay as fuck.

Having your spells be affected by the height at which you cast them was an interesting idea but there's not a whole lot of them where this matters unfortunately.

Baldur's Gate 3
-Positioning matters: Verticality for example gives advantage, blocking line of sight with objects, grouping up enemies or kiting melee monsters.
-Tactical and puts emphasize on spell synergy, you can combine multiple effect for a bigger one, there is a lot of combos you can pull off: water+lighting. Oil+fire. Acid to reduce AC, stacking feats to crits. Water+Ice to freeze. Frost+Force to shatter. You can also create surface to avoid damage, jumping on web reduces fall dmg to 0. you can stack barrels and explosives and who doesnt like a big BOOM?
A lot of control field spells which you can also combine: eg silence+hunger of hadar, slowing enemies prevents them from escaping the silence circle rendering them helpless. silence circles+thunder or force spells for stealth spell kills.
-You can use the environmental objects to your advantage, see a rock on the rooftop? can drop it on your enemies, group them together for max dmg output, you can use objects like a forge hammer, or gimmicks that give haste or invisiblity
-Lighting matters and changes stealth combat, you can use lighting and shadow to your advantage
-A lot of shapeshifting forms that are unique
-Tons of cool abilities that can be used in combat and outside of combat
-Great encounter design with lots of enemy variety, each boss has own legendary action and gimmicks.
-Even melee classes can be tactical with their manourvering strikes
-Throwing enemies is fun and shoving them off a cliff is fun too
-Physics play a part in the game, boxmaxing is a legit strat
-Items play a role in the combat, frost glaie - infuse bow - arrow of many targets - equip frost circle ring - one arrow casts 3 frost ring - you deal dmg and create cc surface for your enemies
-Can throw potions to maximize healing, can throw to heal during combat
-Great amount of unique summons
-Poisons, elixirs and other tools to use during the fight
-destroy ladders to keep vertical adv

many more..

I played PSO2 because mecha, and fell in love with Phantom Katana, all other weapons felt boring. Also loved how the game had giant mecha sections that played pretty much like Zone of the Enders 2, but those were few and even fewer of those were really good.

I'm not into jrpg's and didn't like it

Remember Pandora's Tower? I do.

All of this is nullified by the fact that it's 5e. House ruled 5e but still 5e. D:OS2 is just better.

character building games where your characters don't matter because you'll be blowing up barrels and throwing everything off cliffs anyways

lol

i was really young when i played this. all i remember is something about a mechanic were dying forced you to replay from the beginning but you'd keep your levels or something. i didn't like that so i quit. i was pretty dumb back then, maybe i'll give play it again before i die. probably not. wish there were more hours in the day.

Outward was all-in-all a shit game but it had the right idea with making magic more interesting. Unfortunately what they did with that was very shallow all-in-all, but it's something that needs to be explored in more games.

casting rune combinations to generate specific spells (not so uncommon, and in this game there are 4 runes and combinations only take 2, though some spells have another follow-up combination you can cast)

using consumables to create small elemental zones that then turn nearly-useless spells you cast into imba enemy-deleters. you can stack multiple zones and if one spell interacts with all of them, then one cast will trigger all of them

debuff/DoT based spellcaster

totem-based spellcaster

It has mods that expand on these quite a bit but I never touched them.

Silent Storm isn't really mind-blowing, but I don't see other games that do what it did. Turn-based tactics, think OG Xcom but in 3D and with simulated lines-of-sight, rpg stats govern accuracy. It's very intuitive, but the game didn't do much with it.

Ultrakill, simple systems that have many ways of interacting feels good at all levels, transcended from boomershooter to devil may cry.
youtube.com/watch?v=b9Viy-_4jDU

my grandia niggers
add to that the comfy party camp/inn-time chats, that's sorely lacking in any game.

K, but first of all acknowlage that getting catred (in mh terms) is part of the fun. Notorious failures that help you find your own solutions to each obsticle is the real journey of this game.
And reading what's written below can make this journey unsatisfying, compared to learing it yourself.

Now putting that aside

Acknowledge that ranged charcters run this game, so center your strategy around them

If your characters are too far from enemy to stage proper attack, place the in-ward the corner's wall to ranged avoid counter-attack (obsticals block ranged attacks)

Sometimes it's better to not attack/kill enemy units with your melee troops, because they leave the cover

Also place your ranged characters a zone behind melee ones, as to not to be targeted by enemy melee units

If you have no choice you can place your fragile character inside the texture (but slightly behind) of the bulkier unit to them tank incoming projectiles (you are greatly rewarded for precise movement placement)

Try to keep whole party within close distance of one another or it will get very akward

All units be ally or foe are limited to 2 zones movement per turn, abuse this limitation to your advantage

ALWAYS switch to first person POV when using ranged attack, to not shoot your own party in the back

Place units as far away from each other and read what each different party's attack buff does (difference can be very substential)(they are documented on gfaq)

Checkpoints are very rare and deceptive

Movement outside of battle is a slog, no way around it

Systematically eliminate enemies by their turn priority (arrenged alphabetically in Ui above) so that they never get thier proper turn

Healing damages undead

You can "turn off th anime" in the options (I know, pretty based ngl)

Geoff can gun

Zake is liability

Progression

Try to invest skill points into the team-buffs, like pots and team-aura abilities for each character

No level is "true" bullshit; expect for skeleton cave and gorian lair (if you badly position during auto-checkpoit you'll need to restart whole level)

Don't be greedy, if you see green zone, it's good time to leave

Every leaver, door and cheast is trapped so be sure to asume the battle formation before interacting with them

You can farm plutonium stock, leves and rare weapons in caves, although it's tenacious and not necessary at all (each cave closes upon being cleared; and re-opens upon mission clear)

You won't really understand how battle system works until after you clear desert fort (6th mission?)

Don't be retard, don't rage, think of each turn 3 steps ahead, slow and steady

twewy

NGL... this looks like absolute dogshit.

cartwheels make the bullets hit harder

more like games with retarded combat systems

Battle System:

This game has turns AND rounds (Ui hardly shows it)

Characters' turn order is absolute and never random

Round ends after each unit uses their turn, and always starts with Geoff (so make sure to assert position in which no one dies before next round while out of of turns)

Each unit can have limtless number of turns but only 1 "priority turn", it expires after they act, even if they chain-in someone else's turn

You should always try to chain character, whose priority turn already expired

Basic strategy is to have Geoff always act alone in first turn then chain him into each subsequent turn

However if you have 4 or more characters then it's mathematically correct to have 3rd or 4th (the strongest one is your party) character to chain-in since the first turn

Chaining:

Buffs/Healing: Allow buffed units to chain-in current during turn

Defend: Allow everyone in the same and adjected zones to chain-in

Attack (best chain): Allows every unit within attack range of the attacked enemy unit to chain-in

Pots and buffs can be important for turn chaining so don't waste them during battle

There is no shame in using some characters (mage) as proxy for turn chining to the others

There is a thread on gfaq what each stat does

Hopefully someone reads alat, and I didnt't write it for myself ;____;

>Don't be retard, don't rage, think of each turn 3 steps ahead, slow and steady

God damn it, it's Puzzle Quest all over again.

The camp chats seem like such a small thing, but they add so much. Really fleshes out the characters personalities and endears you to them. One of the reasons I like FFXV. The camping part of it anyway. And fishing.

I have the game pirated since ps3 emulator appeared. I appreciate all of this, will save it for another try with the game.

Finish Lobo.Corp

Midway through Ruina (I think? I beat Philip though he escaped after switching forms??)

Want more games that do over the top management stuff like this

Cant find any.

Im fiending.

there are literally none so enjoy the suffering

Been a while since i played it.
But i don't recall Pandora's tower having a system that was unique or original. Not to say it was bad, by any means, serviceable. But i recall the strong point of the game being the zelda-esque dungeons and bosses and the plot with the timer and the girl.

Minor spellcheck