Games you wish had more of an impact?

[kyouki]

I wish 8bit RPGs had more of a lasting impact on the genre. I love the mix of exploration, information gathering, and resource management. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had a huge impact- look at all the Famicom RPGs that look exactly like DQ!- but it didn't last long, and by the time the 16bit RPGs were out there was already a much stronger focus on story to the exclusion of the stuff that made the 8bit RPGs interesting.

It's too bad because I think you can take the exploration/info gathering/resource management of the 8bit games and put a story on top and still have it work. Romancing SaGa does a pretty good job of it in my opinion.

[acidonia]

Digimon World DS and Digimon Dusk and Dawn version.

Digi Evolution Charts: All Digimon in the game have multiple Evoution Lines alot needing certain requirements to evolve in to most having their own attacks as well. You can devolve a Digimon and then evolve it into a new digimon in it's chart. Each time you do this the base stats get higher so it is possible to make even a low level rank Digimon as strong and more powerfull as a higest rank Digimon in the game.

Pokemon in Black and White has added a item that boost stats of just mid level Pokemon for players who do not want to fully evolve them it's called evolite.

[kal]

Realm of the Haunted/Tex Murphy

Seriously what happened to first person adventures - What else did we get in the genre...Breakdown and Penumbre. Not that they're bad titles we just don't get nearly enough compared to the Manshoots.

Trap Gunner/Spy VS Spy

Puzzle trap based combat titles just never took off even though they had a ton of potential.

Startopia / Dungeon Keeper

Indepth, Highly Detailed and hugely entertaining management sims. Instead we get MUD TV and Dungeons...woo.

[Weasel]

X-COM: UFO Defense. Even the "holy grails" of the tactics genre - games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, Front Mission, and Shining Force - forego the more realistic tactical approach X-COM favored, in lieu of needless and bizarre limitations on what units can do. I don't care if the shotgun I'm firing only has an "effective" range of 4 tiles, I damn well want to try it, because who knows, I might get lucky and severely wound if not kill my target.

What follows is a huge point for point rant about strategy and tactics RPGs compared to X-COM.

Final Fantasy Tactics offers an in-game calendar that advances one day for every space you travel. Unfortunately, outside of a few obscure game mechanics, this does not seem to have much bearing on the actual flow of the game, as story events do not care whether it has been one day or one hundred days, they still happen the exact instant Ramza arrives at the proper location.

On the other end, we've got X-COM, whose Geoscape view has time advancing at various speeds regardless of whether you're doing anything. Time affects all kinds of things - that shipment of assault rifles, tank shells, and soldiers you ordered? That'll get here in three days; better pray no UFOs show up while you're waiting for them! UFOs terrorizing Cape Town (evidently a popular venue for terror attacks in X-COM)? How soon your soldiers arrive on the scene will influence public opinion about your group, and in turn, how much of a budget you get at the end of each month. It's really in-depth, and the timer only goes as fast as you want it to - by default time passes only five seconds for every second of real time, but you can accelerate this to 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 1 hour, or 1 day (for the impatient). The game will offer to automatically slow time down to the slowest setting when anything important happens.

Disgaea has all sorts of complicated rules that determine the effective range of missile or magic attacks, and yet does not pay attention to line of fire (except in area-effect spells, where you can accidentally engulf your party members in that Mega Fire spell if you aim it incorrectly). Ordinarily speaking, a Scout with a pistol can only fire around 5-7 spaces away from himself, and whether or not he hits is based on a random dice roll, with no real consequences for missing except for simply not doing any damage to his target. X-COM's missile weapons system works from the actual firing arc of the shooter's weapon, taking into account whether the soldier has spent enough time steadying their aim (i.e. how many Time Units you spend on the shot), how far they moved during that turn prior to firing, whether they are crouching, etc. When the shot is fired, the game traces the bullet from its source all the way to wherever it ends up - bad shots will fly right past the intended target, and if the shooter is especially unlucky, will hit a friendly or civilian behind the target. Firing explosive missiles may result in the missile flying too far, or hitting too short. Soldiers' morale is even taken into effect, as if a soldier is on the verge of panic, they stand a vastly greater chance of missing. And most importantly: there is no artificial limit on how far a soldier can fire his weapon. There is only the physical limit of how accurately the soldier can shoot.

FF Tactics, Front Mission, and Disgaea all have "counter-attack" systems where a character stands a random chance of hitting an enemy back when attacked. X-COM provides this, but ALSO provides a feature wherein a soldier can pre-empt the enemy's attack altogether. If enough Time Units are spared at the end of the player's turn, as soon as an alien comes into view, the soldier may take a quick shot at the foe. Setting up ambush tactics is an extremely important strategy to make sure that your men don't get slaughtered.

Front Mission 3 allows pilots to eject from their Wanzers and commandeer other (unoccupied) Wanzers. This is the closest the game comes to allowing you to re-equip during a mission. X-COM allows you to pull up a soldier's inventory at any time, to equip alternate weapons (costing more Time Units depending on the accessibility of the inventory slot - the backpack takes longest), carry unconscious comrades to safety (yes, you can store dead/wounded soldiers in your backpack!), or even pick up and throw weapons and grenades. If a soldier is out of ammo, one potential strategy is to have another nearby soldier place a spare magazine in one of the "hand" slots, order that soldier to throw the item to the other soldier (again, accuracy comes in to play, the soldier may throw the clip too far or too short, or even hit the soldier in the head with it and deal a miniscule amount of damage), and then pick up said magazine and load it. This can be done in a single turn with enough spare Time Units on the receiving soldier's end to fire his weapon afterwards. And unlike Final Fantasy Tactics, where the ability to throw items is a Chemist ability that must be equipped (or the character must be a Chemist, limiting their equipment choices), this entire procedure can be done by any soldier at any time, using the exact same interface as is used to fire guns.

And just to show that I'm not biasing X-COM solely against Japanese games: take Baldur's Gate (or any of BioWare's real-time-turn-based games, including KOTOR). Its combat relies on random dice rolls for determining attack hits/misses and making characters wait the several seconds for their combat round to end before they can attack again. X-COM Apocalypse, the third game in the series (and presently the last "official" game in the series in the strategy genre), offered a similar real-time-with-pause option, except using the Time Units system to determine the speed of actions. Actions are synchronized. Complicated squad actions can be ordered while the game is paused, almost to the complexity of an early Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six game (I do not know if it's possible to plan an entire mission in advance, though). Soldiers can be ordered to do the exact same things as in turn-based mode, with the added catch that the aliens are doing their thing at the exact same time as your soldiers are doing theirs. Outside of the Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord series (and X-COM's spiritual successor, UFO: Aftermath), I have not seen a single game since that follows this design.

And now XCOM (no dash) has returned to us as another FPS game, without the strategic element, without the unique Geoscape system, without the satisfaction of having ordered an entire squad to victory without losing a single guy. Why can't more tactics games be like the X-COM games of yore?

[derboo]

Have you played Jagged Alliance 2? If not, you should try it.

[Rash]

I never understood how a game like Dungeon Keeper (and its sequel) never had an impact on the game industry and the game design philosophy behind the RTS. Certainly games have been inspired by it and there were games before it that allowed you to be the evil doer. However, I can't think of a single RTS that resembles its style and approach towards resource collection, minion management and spells.

Nox versus Diablo 2's impact on isometric PC RPGs. I can't deny Diablo 1's insanely positive impact on PC RPGs in general, but I will say that the praise Diablo 2 receives is undeserving. Nox came out five months before Diablo 2 and was a superior isometric PC RPG in every way possible. It didn't have as many classes, but it didn't need them. Multi-player had no balance issues and a ton of game options. It wasn't just a "quest with friends or PvP" kind of multi-player experience that is typical in RPGs that focus on a single player story but also feature multi-player options. It felt more like Quake or Unreal Tournament when you played competitors online. No one played it. No one has heard of it. Most know of Diablo. Most will never know of Nox. It's a shame.

[Weasel]

May 24, 2011 2:03:56 GMT -5 derboo said:

Have you played Jagged Alliance 2? If not, you should try it.

I need to get the original JA2 one of these days. When GOG.com first launched, I bought the Unfinished Business add-on without realizing it wasn't the original game (it does operate on its own but it is insanely difficult). what I need is the original game and a manual so I know what the hell I'm doing.

[retr0gamer]

The original game is on GoG I thought?

(yep definitely there, just checked)

[loempiavreter]

May 23, 2011 0:32:29 GMT -5 derboo said:

Weaponlord

Mirror's Edge

Non-Metroidvania, non-puzzle 2D action platformers

Fallout (especially vs. Diablo)

What I recently learned is called "Immersive Simulation"

I wholeheartly agree with "Non-Metroidvania, non-puzzle 2D action platformers" I want to see some new Ninja Ryuukenden-like platformers/clones.

[Lash]

Secret of Evermore

Ended up getting compared to Secret of Mana, and in all honesty I see it as far more entertaining in a variety of ways.

[Weasel]

May 24, 2011 6:30:33 GMT -5 retr0gamer said:

The original game is on GoG I thought?

(yep definitely there, just checked)

The point was, it wasn't there at launch for some inexplicable reason.

[nickz]

Red Earth. I wouldn't mind more co-op fighting games like that. Also, any sort of innovative racing game. Racing games are awesome, but at lot of them feel the same.

[loempiavreter]

May 24, 2011 14:12:33 GMT -5 nickz said:

Red Earth. I wouldn't mind more co-op fighting games like that.

- Oni - The Ninja Master/Metamoqester
- Kyuukyoku Sentai Dadandarn/Monster Maulers

[9inchsamurai]

Simon's Quest/Adventure of Link - I think that if more companies tried these kinds of games back in the day, Symphony of the Night would have been quite different. I can't even think of any 16-bit games that are along the lines of Simon's Quest/Adventure of Link.

[Sturat]

May 24, 2011 15:13:59 GMT -5 9inchsamurai said:

Simon's Quest/Adventure of Link - I think that if more companies tried these kinds of games back in the day, Symphony of the Night would have been quite different. I can't even think of any 16-bit games that are along the lines of Simon's Quest/Adventure of Link.

Do the Wonderboy and Popful Mail games count? i.e. non-linear 2D action games that still have a semblance of balanced difficulty and momentum?

I actually thought Richter-mode in Symphony of the Night was pretty great; I wish more non-linear games ditched experience points (at least for the optional character) like that.