I was not talking about solving riddles but about the optimal use of the character's abilities. Like if your mage encounters an ice golem you would be better of casting a fireball then an ice storm or let your fighter wield a blunt weapon when fighting skeletons.

Intelligence most of the time only has an indirect effect on game play because it comes into conflict with the most important aspect of playing games: interactivity. The player decides how the character acts within the world of the game and he uses his (the player's) judgement.

You can try to limit the players choices when it comes to the solving of riddles by presenting him different descriptions of a riddle depending in the intelligence of his character (which means that a lot of work will be done and only a small part will be presented to the player) but if you take that too far you will end up with the computer playing the character that the player created and the player will end up with watching a movie instead of playing a game.

I guess RPGs can be broadly classified in two categories:

1. Party based games where you the player kind of has the same role as a football coach, and try to get the party members to use their strengths, abilities and equipment for the benefit of the team.

2. Single character games where you (try to) role play the player character.

For me the first category is about tactical combat and character development. A good setting and a good story is a nice bonus.

For the second category combat is not important, it's more about immersion and exploration.

Sadly the first category has been extinct since about 2003, at least as AAA games.

People don't like how much was taken out. And it's more than just numbers. Still, a good game though.

For me its games that try to emulate the origin of crpgs: Pen & Paper RPGs. Probably could count these on one hand :(

FO
FO2
Arcanum
Bloodlines (with latest "try true to dev vision" fan-restoration modpack)
Dragon Age (to some extend)

I do have a blast playing the other riff-raff which gets called RPGs these days like Diablo, Elderscrolls Series or Duke Nukem but IMO the world needs more of the above.

*sigh* But I understand the nightmare to develop these complex beasts.

Well, seems like RPG is also used as a quality term. An idea RPG is the most RPGish of RPGs, that is, the one that most succeeds at offering roleplaying experience on a computer, which is not easy. The most successful RPG at being a RPG, which is an impossible quest.

Real RPG has become like "real art". All art is art, but which art is real art ? It's a term that designates a category (making stuff for esthetics function) and a quality (eew you call that art, THIS is art). Or heroism : "who is your favorite hero" often means "who is the most a real true hero".

Given the unreachable ideal of "true roleplaying" on computer, the question would be very different about a FPS.

-good story
-engaging atmosphere (things like music, art style, etc.)
-challenging, strategic, combat (btw, challengin=/= frustrating)
-likeable characters
-decent length of about 20+ hours

open world isn't necessary imo, but it's always a plus if done right.

my favorite rpgs were eye of the beholder, gold box series, wizardry 7, bards tale 1-3, ultima 7, kingdoms of amalur, anything remotly gothic related, and of course all the elder scrolls stuff.

there are many many more.

I basically like ANYHTING thats in the rpg genre, EXCEPT FOR FALLOUT 3, that game was a mockery of rpgs.

my bottom line is, for the most part, game makers have been getting it right when it comes to fun rpgs. of every sorts.

i just got done playing shining in the darkness, whew that was a dying art. you just don't see rpgs like that anymore.

does anybody know why bards tale, shining in the darkness, and games of their ilk have fallen to the way side? seem like all people want now adays, is to have ACTION in their rpgs. like it wont sell without some reflex instensive combat behind it.

i figure its becuase they are trying to push the genre forward, and they think that old turn based party stuff where the first creature you fight is a slime, is old news and nobody wants it anymore.

While I disagree about Fallout 3, it's one of my fave RPGs. It's all subjective.

I think the problem is in the 90's there was time when RPGs became pretty rare, partly due to SSI losing the D&D License and other companies half assing a lot of games. WRPGs got a resurgence later but the biggest game to cause the resurgence was Diablo and with that it brought in a lot of gamers that wouldn't touch a turn based RPG with a 10' pole and were very vocal about it. It was on of the reasons that Baldur's Gate was a Real time/pause system since at the time Turn based turned off a lot of gamers, though it wasn't completely dead thanks to Fallout. Sadly Turn based combat really was pushed to the side.

Recent turn based first person dungeon crawlers? There's what the soon to be four games in the Etrian Odyssey series, SMT Strange Journey and soon SMT Soul Hackers (though it's a port/remake), The Dark Spire, Unchained Blades, Class of Heroes 1 and 2, Wizardry Labrynth of Lost Souls?

(Can't comment on most of those though <_<)

i do agree that it's kind of sad that a lot of older flavors of WRPGs have died out in favor of Bethseda making one type of game, Bioware making one type of game, and no one giving a damn about anything else.

No it doesn't. ;) Very true. My opinions about jrpgs (or anything else for that matter) are not scientific theories. I try to be accurate and reasonable though but you know...opinions. Very true.If I were really determined to find something to object to (for those who would say teh above) it would be that it seems there are a variety of artistic styles in "western rpgs". Look at the Spiderweb Software games (Avernum, the older Exiles, etc.) and then look at Natuk, then Baldur's Gate, then Icewind Dale, then Skyrealms of Jorune, etc. etc. Of course it may be that just as many different styles exist amongst Japanese artists but we in America are just bombarded with the 'Big Eyes, Small Mouth' thing (or big head, small body, spiky hair thing).
After all I was a gigantic evangelist for Anime and manga back in the 1980s but when all this Pokemon/ Yu-Gi-Oh stuff took over and suddenly every cartoon on TV featured this same style...it just got to be sickening. This carried over for me to computer games. I used to be able to sit down and play Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Phantasy Star etc. and now I become unnerved just seeing screen shots of such games. Cannot grant you this one. I have seen the 'Lowly farm-boy with a destiny to save the world' type plot many times in JRPGs but usually in 'Western RPGs' character creation is up to the player. Kind of a necessary trait of a good RPG for me. When developers force pre-gen PCs on me it always feels as though some bad amateur writer who thinks he is a great writer and that everyone should read his stuff, has decided to disguise his novella as a game. I have NEVER been much interested in math. You are generalizing here, at best. I can't really speak for the 'Action RPGs'. I play turn-based RPGs and never have to deal with "frantic mouse clicking". I will readily concede that names of western RPGs probably sound stupid to Japanese gamers and are not objectively any better than the other, especially after translation (which I suspect is part of the problem with JRPG titles here in America sounding so silly). Granted.
Nice post.

Have to strongly disagree. ALL RPGs are tactical simulators. Before D&D came about, kids played "Cops & robbers" or "cowboys & indians" or some such. There were no mechanics involved ...no quantified attributes or way to measure success or failure and so these 'games' always devolved into "I shot you!"/ "No you did not!" arguments.

Now I will grant that combat specifically is not necessary since a RPG can be rooted in any sort of conflict-resolution dynamic (a RPG where you have to play a politician who 'fights' his enemies using debate skills and other resources for example) but combat is the easiest and arguably the most alluring since we tend to imagine playing heroic characters and heroic characters usually do a lot of ass-kicking.

For me a good RPG is one where you are able to create your own main character and your choices affect the game world.

And again for me a great RPG as to have Stats, I love looking at my character sheet/menu and look at what he's good at, bad at and how he should behave.

Of course I am, that was the whole point. ;)



You might have misunderstood me here, but I can see why - when I wrote "unknown" I didn't think of unknown in the sense of 'lowly peasant boy' but exactly in the sense of free character creation as opposed to pre-generated character. Many WRPGs have this conflicting balance between allowing the player to freely define who they are themselves and then still force a predefined (hi)story and destiny on them. Noone really knows the player character because he/she has no face and is easily replaceable by another random person, and at the same time he/she is the only one able to save the world and all of its problems. You can be whoever you want to be when you start the game, but in the end you're going to be THE hero the story was written for, the one who saved the world (and was meant to do it all along) and you're loved by everyone no matter what you did. And yeah, I'm perfectly aware I'm generalizing again and that there are exceptions; but that only proves how unfair it is to paint everything with the same brush, be it Western or JRPGs. ;)


My point is that what we conceive as the same 'Big Eyes, Small Mouth, big head, small body, spiky hair' art style might in fact be equally diversified as the artistic styles in western RPGs, even if we accept that all JRPGs share these features. Those are just a few conventions that don't define the whole art style, IMO. Just as all the examples you mention above share the same conventions about depicting humans in a more realistic way. I doubt the differences between them would be evident to everyone, regardless of their culture and preferences in gaming. I bet even a citizen of North America or Europe who isn't particularly interested in WRPGs could claim that they all look the same to them, never mind their artistical differences.


Compare for example these:

Chrono Trigger
Okami
Vagrant Story
Fortune Summoners

to these:

Natuk
Avernum
Icewind Dale
[url=http://игрозор.рф/images/screenshots/11530/screenshot_alien_logic_skyrealms_of_jorune_11.jpg]Skyrealms of Jorune[/url]


Sure, they look different and you might be able to immediately tell what is Western and what is JRPG, but if you compare them among each other, are the differences between the WRPGs so much more evident than the differences between the JRPGs?

And what about these ones?

Septerra Core
Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
Anachronox
or this guy?

Bump

RPGs should really EMPHASIS the role-playing for example:

Skyrim breaks the role-playing rule by making me dragonborn at all times even if I am a stealthy thief which dragon shouts do not fit with being a thief and the fact that the game ends the same no matter if I am good or evil.

RPGs should make you choose how the plot will turn out, everything you do will in turn affect how it will end. I could save the world, conquer it, destroy it, etc. etc. etc.

What makes a great RPG? Anything that really makes the game a roleplaying and not a replaying experience.