It's suuuuper weird that Attribute scores are the most malleable upgradable statistic in the game, like, you get one Talent point every level and one skill point every two levels (weird too bc the skill system is almost entirely vestigial) but THREE Attribute points every level. Like, this game is directly descended from the d20 system where the idea of your Attributes being that easily changed and growing that much is nigh unthinkable.
And it's pointless, too. Even on Nightmare I rarely deviated from pumping points into a single attribute. Early on I tried to balance it between Strength, Willpower, and Dexterity for warriors, Dexterity and Cunning for rogues, and Magic and Willpower for mages, but honestly the warriors just need a piddly sum of Dexterity for certain items and talents (and then pump Strength), the rogues might need a bit of Strength and an early push for Cunning (and then pump Dexterity) and mages are so fucking obnoxiously strong and especially with the Arcane Warrior specialization pumping Magic exclusively only makes them stronger.
This isn't optimized, mind, but the game was pretty easy even on the highest difficulty.
I assumed that "combat" in quotes involves the nonviolent form of combat.
Boss rush is not something I ever wanted out of Undertale but I don't think it's necessarily a terrible idea. Undertale's system is such that a pacifist boss rush is a thing that actually makes sense.
A boss rush mode would ONLY work if it was pacifist, partially because Undertale's fighting is intentionally trivial and mostly because the idea of turning its violent option into something "fun" like a boss rush mode is entirely inimical to the game's purpose.
But man would I love to revisit some of the pacifist boss fights. Love ya, Muffet.
You *did* get to revisit (truncated versions of) all the major pacifist mode boss fights, during the second phase of the fight against Asriel. No Muffet, though.
i think whether or not a JRPG holds my attention for any great length of time really depends on how much i find the story, dialogue and characters interesting, as i don't generally enjoy turn-based combat
I don't think I actually had much trouble with that. It was mostly getting 3/4 dudes ganked by Grand Cross, because FF has way too many completely 100% debilitating status effects.
That was during the Fiesta a few years back, and I was lucky enough to have a solid White Mage assigned.
Zelda is not a Fable game. It's not about killing shit with your sword and making big magic splosions. It's about solving puzzles and using your cunning to overcome much stronger foes. I feel like this concept is a lot of neat ideas gelled together with a premise that fundamentally misunderstands the Zelda games. The art's also nice, if a little inconsistent stylistically with most of the franchise.
Honestly I really want to see a LoZ game with Zelda in it that has her using spells in non-combat related capacities. I've yet to see a video game where the mage gets by using smart people tactics and not bigger explosions, which is a shame considering how they're supposed to be powered by INT (most of the time).
Games tend to use intelligence as a shorthand for "how many books have you read" as opposed to an actual measure of intelligence or cleverness. Which is a damn shame, if you ask me.
Games tend to use intelligence as a shorthand for "how many books have you read" as opposed to an actual measure of intelligence or cleverness. Which is a damn shame, if you ask me.
To be fair though, INT as a concept is severely underdeveloped, because there's not a lot of games in which you can "read a bunch of books to come up with a solution for a problem "
Well no, but you could use intelligence as a modifier for moves that would be considered tactics or strategies. It could also be used as a critical hit modifier to symbolize knowledge of an enemy's weak spot. You know, the kind of thing that indicates someone as smart or well-read, instead of just using intelligence as "magic damage stat".
Actually, come to think of it, western RPGs often do this well, with high intelligence offering more skills and dialog options to show that your character knows a lot of stuff.
I'd say it's more of a dislike of nomenclature seeing as how all these issues disappear if the magic stat is named Magick or Affinity or something of that nature
Well no, but you could use intelligence as a modifier for moves that would be considered tactics or strategies. It could also be used as a critical hit modifier to symbolize knowledge of an enemy's weak spot. You know, the kind of thing that indicates someone as smart or well-read, instead of just using intelligence as "magic damage stat".
Actually, come to think of it, western RPGs often do this well, with high intelligence offering more skills and dialog options to show that your character knows a lot of stuff.
I agree with a lot of this. Intelligence could completely be related to skills that provide bonuses for taking certain kinds of ground (such as having elevation) or martial concepts (such as using the maximum practical range of your weapon). And it could still influence magic, such as increasing the complexity of spells you can cast (whatever that means in context).
Mount & Blade is a thing that does some of these things, but it's a magic-free approximation of history rather than a fantasy game, at least without mods (and there are very many good ones).
I feel like this conversation betrays a fundamental dislike of how RPGs work in general.
I feel this is a matter of character representation, trait abstraction, and mechanical interpretation. Your usual RPG tends to do a lot of direct damage stuff with magic, but increasing the depth of a combat system (and allowing spellcasters to access enough of it) can provide a sufficient baseline of direct damage dealing options. Then spells can focus on things like supporting creative tactics, especially if there are spell types that become triggered upon combinations of conditions being met. Perhaps you can conjure a magic circle, which triggers various effects as you defeat enemies within it.
Zelda is not a Fable game. It's not about killing shit with your sword and making big magic splosions. It's about solving puzzles and using your cunning to overcome much stronger foes. I feel like this concept is a lot of neat ideas gelled together with a premise that fundamentally misunderstands the Zelda games. The art's also nice, if a little inconsistent stylistically with most of the franchise.
Honestly I really want to see a LoZ game with Zelda in it that has her using spells in non-combat related capacities. I've yet to see a video game where the mage gets by using smart people tactics and not bigger explosions, which is a shame considering how they're supposed to be powered by INT (most of the time).
Yeah I have to agree. That design seems to restrict initial skills to after defeating dungeon bosses and then go into unlockable skill progression -- which is great, just fundamentally not a Zelda game though could be close to it with a bit of tweaking (Skyward Sword dipped a bit into this). Also consider that a) Zelda is playable alongside Link in two rather high profile games (Smash and Warriors) b) those games are in fact about killing shit and big magic splosions, and c) Zelda tends to outclass Link in both of them, or at least has some extreme key advantages.
I do want to see a Zelda game starring Zelda, with heavy emphasis on magic. It could go on a fast auto-recharge like Ys. The puzzles would be along the lines of Golden Sun or Portal. Maybe heavy use of elemental terrain effects like Divinity: Original Sin, which could factor into boss puzzles, setting up traps in combat, or halting/redirecting incoming attacks. Situational ways to bounce or amplify a spell. That article mentions screwing with materials that the enemy is wearing. Zelda has a lot of potential to be an even craftier character than Link.
I kind of also want to see a Zelda game where Link is just straight-up female, and where this is actually important for plot reasons. Not just Linkle's adorable delusions of grandeur, but like, maybe Ganondorf took over already and is trying to King Herod any boys who resemble past Links and might grow up to be The Hero, so the endlessly reincarnating spirit of the hero just goes "fuck it, girl power" specifically because nobody would expect it. It'd also lend itself to a lot of new character dynamics with Zelda that couldn't really happen otherwise.
Apparently there's some sort of outrage over the allegedly sexist comment from Nintendo regarding Link and Zelda, as seen here:
During the conversation, which was translated by a Nintendo representative, we asked Aonuma if the rumors of having the option to play as a female version of Link are accurate. He said that he's aware of the conversations happening online, stating: "So yes, there were rumors like that, and we did discuss as a staff as to what would be possible if we took that route."
However, instead of entertaining the idea of the player being able to choose the hero Link's gender, Aonuma said his team considered what they deemed to be the simplest option; making princess Zelda the lead character. "We thought about it," said Aonuma, "and decided that if we're going to have a female protagonist it's simpler to have Princess Zelda as the main character."
This idea was ultimately rejected, because according to Aonuma "...if we have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do? Taking into account that, and also the idea of the balance of the Triforce, we thought it best to come back to this [original] makeup."
I can see how that can be read as sexist, but what about the alternate explanation where they basically see Link as the "hero" role and Zelda as the "character who acts as macguffin" role, as opposed to being about their genders?
It doesn't even seem like they have any problem with having Zelda be the protagonist, so much as they're not sure what to do with Link if that's the case. He kind of has to be present, given the Triforce, but he wouldn't work well as a macguffin character because he's a mute player insert whose literally only purpose is to be courageous and smash things. It works well for Warriors because there isn't really a passive macguffin character at all, but most main Zelda games by necessity of their story have a clear protagonist and clear sidelines.
They've kind of written themselves into a lot of corners over the years, and it doesn't help that they probably didn't even start this conversation until too late in the development to be able to fully consider how to pull it off. It also seems like kind of a copout to say the simplest option would be to radically alter the entire story of a story-driven game instead of to, at the very least, create a new character rig and edit a few thousand lines. Like, as mentioned earlier I'd be completely on board with a game where Link is female and this is actually worked into the story somehow, but there's a certain minimum-effort option that's rather...less than that but still wholly doable.
Glenn: an argument could be made that even if it's not about the genders in this specific case, it's still a part of the overall trend for women to be related to macguffins rather than being characters in control of their own destiny.
But yeah I think it would make more sense, given Link's character, to just have a lady-Link rather than have Zelda be the main character. Link doesn't have much going for him outside of being playable.
Well it seems to revolve around whether you see the characters as people or roles.
If you see them as roles, then Zelda is the macguffin and Link is the hero, and you can't change that much. I think that matches with how @Bee said they likely see the characters.
If you see them as people, on the other hand, the Link can easily be the macguffin while Zelda is the hero, because there's nothing wrong with, say, having an "action girl" princess venturing out to save the world by saving this one otherwise nondescript guy who happens to be the one of the vessels in which part of the triforce rests, or something.
Well it seems to revolve around whether you see the characters as people or roles.
If you see them as roles, then Zelda is the macguffin and Link is the hero, and you can't change that much. I think that matches with how @Bee said they likely see the characters.
If you see them as people, on the other hand, the Link can easily be the macguffin while Zelda is the hero, because there's nothing wrong with, say, having an "action girl" princess venturing out to save the world by saving this one otherwise nondescript guy who happens to be the one of the vessels in which part of the triforce rests, or something.
I'd like to mention that in Warriors, Zelda bails Link out more than the opposite.
Comments
It's suuuuper weird that Attribute scores are the most malleable upgradable statistic in the game, like, you get one Talent point every level and one skill point every two levels (weird too bc the skill system is almost entirely vestigial) but THREE Attribute points every level. Like, this game is directly descended from the d20 system where the idea of your Attributes being that easily changed and growing that much is nigh unthinkable.
And it's pointless, too. Even on Nightmare I rarely deviated from pumping points into a single attribute. Early on I tried to balance it between Strength, Willpower, and Dexterity for warriors, Dexterity and Cunning for rogues, and Magic and Willpower for mages, but honestly the warriors just need a piddly sum of Dexterity for certain items and talents (and then pump Strength), the rogues might need a bit of Strength and an early push for Cunning (and then pump Dexterity) and mages are so fucking obnoxiously strong and especially with the Arcane Warrior specialization pumping Magic exclusively only makes them stronger.
This isn't optimized, mind, but the game was pretty easy even on the highest difficulty.
But man would I love to revisit some of the pacifist boss fights. Love ya, Muffet.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
*'90s-style flow about counting dollars over a boom-bap remix of "Dogsong"*
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
- Shell
- Mix
- Killing the bottom part of Neo before Almagest goes off
- Powergrind 5000, because anybody with less than 1700 HP is getting bodied.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Actually, come to think of it, western RPGs often do this well, with high intelligence offering more skills and dialog options to show that your character knows a lot of stuff.
representative, we asked Aonuma if the rumors of having the option to
play as a female version of Link are accurate. He said that he's aware
of the conversations happening online, stating: "So yes, there were
rumors like that, and we did discuss as a staff as to what would be
possible if we took that route."
However, instead of entertaining the idea of the player being able to
choose the hero Link's gender, Aonuma said his team considered what they
deemed to be the simplest option; making princess Zelda the lead
character. "We thought about it," said Aonuma, "and decided that if
we're going to have a female protagonist it's simpler to have Princess
Zelda as the main character."
This idea was ultimately rejected, because according to Aonuma "...if we
have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link
going to do? Taking into account that, and also the idea of the balance
of the Triforce, we thought it best to come back to this [original]
makeup."
sauce: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1233515
I can see how that can be read as sexist, but what about the alternate explanation where they basically see Link as the "hero" role and Zelda as the "character who acts as macguffin" role, as opposed to being about their genders?
But yeah I think it would make more sense, given Link's character, to just have a lady-Link rather than have Zelda be the main character. Link doesn't have much going for him outside of being playable.
If you see them as roles, then Zelda is the macguffin and Link is the hero, and you can't change that much. I think that matches with how @Bee said they likely see the characters.
If you see them as people, on the other hand, the Link can easily be the macguffin while Zelda is the hero, because there's nothing wrong with, say, having an "action girl" princess venturing out to save the world by saving this one otherwise nondescript guy who happens to be the one of the vessels in which part of the triforce rests, or something.
wrong?
In a way I can't really describe