So awhile back, I posted a thread about games in general that had mechanics I absolutely loathed. Well, I figure, that's awful negative as you know there are lots of games that have simply awesome mechanics or systems that we should be celebrating and recognizing as good ideas. I'll kick a few games off that I felt were really good in the way they were done for various reasons. I think the nature of this thread will probably apply more to J-RPGs more than other games, however I'm sure Bethesda-style games and other games with RPG stat elements and mechanics would probably see some entries in a list like this too. So anyways... Lufia and the Fortress of Doom: This game was a very standard J-RPG and it offered little in innovation. What it DID do awesome, though, is the transition from overworld to battle, and how it was incredibly fast (2 seconds, max). The Battle System itself was very fast-paced, and even the battle theme was upbeat and fast. Players rarely lost their bearings due to the dungeon/overworld remaining in the background behind the battle, and the music and battle system being so fast and upbeat lessened the impact on any grinding that was needed. I enjoyed battle in this game, and I felt they did a pretty good job with this. I would also give kudos to the non-standard turn system. They appear to use a number counter similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, where each participant in the battle has a counter and whoever's counter reaches a certain value, you input commands and when the counter reaches another value, the command is carried out. There's also a weight stat that probably affects these counters in some unknown way. There's enough hidden complexity here to give you somewhat of a chaotic feel (battle IS chaos) and I felt they did a good job with it. Grandia 2: I've been playing this recently. A long time ago, my cousin gave me this game but I never really had time to pick it up and play through it and I've finally been doing that. Wow, is this game ever an improvement upon the original. I'd go so far as to say, I love the magic learning system in this game. Gone are the days of casting the same spell over and over and over again to level up an element or a weapon skill. In are the days of simply defeating foes to get better. Not only do you get XP from foes, but you get Magic and Special Coins which you spend in whatever you want to get better at. You find Mana Eggs throughout the game that have a theme (Holy Egg is mostly healing/defense/enemy hindering spells, Chaos Egg can do both Healing and Damage, Mist Egg does some healing and some enemy hinderance with an attack spell or two). You look through the list of spells, buy what spells you want, and you can also upgrade these spells. You also unlock skills that improve your stats with coins, you buy special moves that vary by character (or upgrade any of these). The point is, you don't have to spam, say, a defense+ move to level up earth magic or something stupid like that while fighting weak enemies that can't hurt you so you can stand there and level up everybody's water magic by spamming heals on yourself or something. I think of most J-RPGs I've played, this is probably one of the better methods for learning magic and skills I've seen yet. I'd also have to say something about the Grandia series' version of "Active Time Battle", though this started in Grandia 1, not Grandia 2. Legend of Dragoon: This game had a couple neat things I rather liked. First, was the Addition system. Some people loved it, I'm sure a few hate it, but it at least made attacks interactive. Instead of pushing a button to attack, your character had several different "Additions" or Movesets to choose from, and depending on which one you had equipped at the time, when your character went to attack, there was a series of Quicktime Events that determined how good your character's attack was. My only beef with this system is I feel that the entire Addition List should have been selectable in-battle, where when you choose the Attack option, you get the option of choosing which Addition to attack with. Additions were generally grouped into 3 groups: A basic addition, a Damage-Heavy Addition, and an Addition that was meant to regenerate SP (the resource you used for dragoon abilities). It'd been nice to choose between Damage and SP recovery without having to exit battle, switch the addition, recover SP and then switch it back to damage. Now, ultimately a character's final addition was good on damage AND SP (almost as good as the best SP Addition!) but you had to either wait until late game, or do a LOT of grinding to learn the additions early (you had to perform each addition 80 times to master it IIRC, and the final addition required that you master ALL of the previous additions!). The other mechanic I'd like to talk about here, is the "Defend to Heal 10% of your max HP" mechanic. Nothing more I hate in RPGs is having to never use MP because I either need it for healing, or I need to save all of my MP for the area's boss battle. In Legend of Dragoon, this is no longer a problem, because you can periodically defend to recover some health. Defending is a free action that doesn't cost anything except a turn, and doing it periodically keeps you healed up while fighting the countless mooks you will run into while delving into the game's dungeons. You don't have to worry about whether or not you have enough MP or stacks of healing items to survive until you get to the boss without using healing spells. The 7th Saga: While we're talking about Defense... we might as well mention The 7th Saga. Yes, I know so very few people ever got very far in this game due to its wild challenge (which is either a bug or an oversight -- levelups give you one-fourth of the benefit they should in the NA version of the game, which means you're only 25% as strong as you should be). But this is another one of those rare games that give you a reason to use the "Defend" button that most people overlook in most games, most of the time. In The 7th Saga, whenever you defend, if you attack on your next round, your attack is twice as strong. This means that Defending is not necessarily always a waste of a turn, and in this game, Defending also works against magic (which it doesn't in many other games, since magic overrides Defense in many games). Defending is so bloody important in this game, and you have pretty much zero chance of getting through the game without making liberal use of the Defense command. I like to see that -- I don't like entire mechanics being overlooked because they are not practical to use. Wild ARMs 2: This is one of the very oh-so-rare games where you do not have to worry about using up your MP/SP/AP/whatever pools. This game encourages you to actually use your characters' special abilities and play your characters the way they were meant to be played. They did this by doing something very ingenious. In Wild Arms 1, there was a Force Power meter, and each character had Force Powers. This meter increased every time you got hit and also passively increased as time went on (but very slowly). Well, in Wild ARMs 2, they dumped the MP that Cecilia and Jack had and decided to instead, make everything require Force Power. However, they made two more changes: One, you start with some force when you begin combat, where your Level = Your Starting Force. If you're Lv10, you start with 10 out of 100 force. Abilities that require Force Points do not cost force points. For example, one of the starting characters is a Crest Sorceress just like Cecilia was. Now, for example, if her Flame spell requires 12 FP, then you need to generate 12FP (at least until you attain Level 12...) before you can cast Flame. But once you have 12 FP, and you cast Flame, you still have 12FP and you can cast it again and again and again. What this means is that you will never run out of MP (since there is no MP). Your mages can cast spells, your ninja guys can do ninja stuff, your gun guys can shoot guns, whatever. However, when you use special force powers (which tend to be very powerful), you will spend your force points. For example, the said sorceress has a power called Mystic when she starts out. It costs 25 FP and if you use that when you barely have 25... you will then be unable to cast Flame for a turn or two, so there's balance. It also means that as your characters get higher level, you can do better stuff without having to wait to generate FP before your characters are "into the battle". Also, if you die... your FP drops to 0 even after you get revived, so you gotta recover by attacking or getting hit. Skyborn: This single-player RPG-Maker game is mostly a traditional RPGM game, however it did something that I don't think any other Single-Player JRPG style game ever did: Threat/Enmity/Aggro mechanics. The idea that you needed to have one guy intentionally taking the blows while the weaker people do their healing and damage soars this Single-Player game into the realm that only MMOs have delved into in the past, invoking Teamwork Tactics between your group members. You start out as a girl with a gun that fires literal bolts IIRC and her defense is very modest. When she gets hit, it hurts. You soon meet a swordsman who uses lots of dodges and parries and he has attacks to draw attention onto himself and you also meet a healer. You'll meet two more, but throughout the game there's a very heavy Teamwork aspect that I don't think I've seen in any other Single-Player RPG, where your group members are forced to work together as a team. You can't have one lone wolf going off and doing what they want or you will all die. The group members need to support each other, and this goes behind simply casting heals and buffs. The two tankier characters need to be making sure the enemies' attention is focused on them, and the damage dealer needs to make sure she doesn't go lone wolf and decide to get the enemies' attention, the healer needs to heal and buff, and the remaining person is a support person. She has attacks that make the enemies' next turn miss, and similar things and she needs to make sure she locks down the right moves and allow the rest to happen, while NOT wasting her abilities. This game has a J-RPG style battle system, but yet also employs a lot of tactics and they home that in hard in the first few battles, where your main character nearly dies in one hit while the tank can take several. If you ever decided to turn an MMO into a Single-Player RPG, Skyborn is a pretty good preview of what that would look like. Ever wish you could control an entire dungeon group yourself whenever getting matched with idiots? Pick Skyborn up if you want to know what that would be like. So here's some things to help get this list started and I'm sure there's lots of JRPGs, WRPGs, or just games with RPG like elements that have awesome ideas that I never knew about. I'd be interested to hear what I've missed!
No way, Legend of Dragoon is my favorite PS1 RPG! I'm ecstatic you included it! Chrono Cross has an interesting battle mechanic, probably the best battle system I've seen since then. I won't really explain it since I can hardly remember (I just remember how impressed I was with it), but you can always check it out on YouTube.
Mother 3 and Super Mario RPG also had timed hits but I think Legend of Dragoon did it best overall. Just a shame Legend of Dragoon had major flaws as well such as items being the best form of attack and dragoon form characters are limited in terms of actions. The switching of the first two disks were also annoying. I would love a remake but of course that is never happening. I might have to replay Legend of Dragoon as there is a ton of optional stuff that I missed. Something else it did right. More on subject though, there is a free fan made game call 7th Stand user based on the anime Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. http://7thjojo.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page The game can be play without watching the anime though you might be spoiled if you were to ever watch the anime (though vice versa is also true). Anyway the game give you choices. Nothing new really but the way it gave you choices is what most other games don't do. It give you a choice and it doesn't tell you if it is right or wrong, it is just simply is. Some of the choices can directly change the outcomes that happened on the anime. In a way it is as if you are playing a character that got inserted into the anime and controlling what will happen during that episode may it be for the better or for the worst. Beside a few what-ifs bonus stuff I don't know any official anime based game that do something like that beside maybe Xenoverse somewhat. Out of all of the Naruto games, DBZ games and so on it took a unofficial fan made game to actually make the game worth playing for the story that you already know. In fact by knowing what should be happening make it that much more entertaining. Extremely fun game and while knowledge of the anime may help it isn't required and what you do need to know is explained pretty well in the game as you play. Only downside is that it is an otherwise typical turn based RPG game so you might have to watch the anime just to stay interested if you naturally dislike such games. Playing the game and watching the anime side by side in terms of plot could be a fun way to do it if you haven't seen the anime yet. Choices may not normally be seen as a mechanic but this game keep track of your gender, the body type you choose (a small character will complain early on that he is expected to keep watch on someone twice his size), some otherwise minor choices such as if your character mind the sight of blood, how well you deal with your friends, how mean you are and of course as stated before the choices will outright change the story in some form even if minor. The best example of having real choices in a game that I ever seen though I still need to play the Witcher series which I heard is also good for real choices.
@Zerukoba : On Legend of Dragoon, yeah, they dropped the ball with Dragoon Forms. Seriously. Once you leveled up and got the master additions... you did way more damage with additions than you ever did with dragon forms, even if you managed to somehow slip on a banana peel, flip a coin heads 500 times in a row to somehow get a Perfect on all 5 attacks. There were spells, but you ran out of MP after a couple castings and they were meh. The only thing they could really do was AoE which... you could just use physical attacks instead. The only thing good about dragoons were the immunity to status changes, but uh, most enemies telegraphed these and you just Defended to make yourself immune. Oh, and let's not get into the overpowered Legend Casque and the body armor that goes along with it. Seriously. Invincibility, anyone?
I really don't want to derail your thread into Legend of Dragoon discussion but you just reminded me something by saying AoE attacks. The final bow which is the only bow that did something different (hit all enemies instead of one) was completely useless because you only get it literally one room right before the final boss iirc. Not a extremely huge flaw, just kinda stupid nevertheless though. The game had so many areas that could been improved. Pretty much begging to be remade. A fun fact though most Legend of Dragoon fans are already aware, Dart was going to be a DLC character on PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Would been a potential chance to get new fans and hype for a remake to be done but meh, the more I think about it the more upset I get about it. As for another mechanic I think if anyone love crafting games and the story that JRPG gives but hate grinding then Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis will be the perfect game for you. The PS2 hidden gem have you level up with a skill tree that unlock as you make items, so even in terms of gameplay right away the game encourage you to make one of everything even if you aren't even planning to use it. In fact the only way to increase your max HP or max mana in the game is by items as otherwise your characters will have the exact same amount at the end of the game as they did at the start. It also have a time based system though it is turn based combat where you can stun enemies causing the enemies attacks to be delayed (hopefully enough to kill them before they even get to attack) so even as a JRPG it isn't as stereotypical as my last suggestion. Also another nice thing about the game. You know how JRPG give you like 8 characters but you can only use like maybe 3 at max in battle? This game allow you to switch characters in battle but not only that they can switch normally, switch while defending a character who is being attacked (and switching out) and switch adding an extra attack to the character who just finish attacking (and switching out). The characters not in battle will recover mana while they wait to be switch back in, hopefully defending or adding to an attack in the process. You never feel like you are wasting a turn switching a character in that game. The game is all about crafting and you are limited only by the items you can find. The game unlock new areas as you play while acting as a tutorial as you go instead of dumping everything at you all at once. You learn stuff as you need them. Assuming you were to cheat yourself like 99 of every item then you can start the game with an endgame character by simply being able to craft whatever you want. In a sense it had the same kind of progress as Terraria or Starbound though with less freedom by having a day by day school system for the sake of the story. The game did so much right. The only issue it have is that due to the lack of possible grinding it can become hard on you at some moments and there is nothing you can do about that. The game pretty much force you to get good at the game itself or deal with the low grade for that class. Something that might drive a perfectionist nuts. In that sense the game encourage attacking weaknesses by making weapons and armors literally for that one hard boss.
Heroes in general from Heroes of Might and Magic IV. The game itself could have been better, but the hero system is, so, awesome. A whole group of just heroes weren't so effective, but I enjoyed playing it like that anyway. And the fact that they are in the battle themselves makes it so much more interesting. I mean, in the other Heroes games the lad/lass is just hiding behind in the corner like a wuss, throwing a spell or two.
I got another one: Shadow Hearts (and its two sequels): This game featured a timed "Fate Wheel" that was basically a radar going around and when the radar line passed the shaded areas, you were supposed to push a button. It was easy to get basic attacks, but if you wanted your stronger attacks (some 10-20% more damage), the red-shaded areas were usually so tiny. And then there were the Ring Status effects that made doing anything rather challenging. It put a bit more interactivity into battles, but the only flaw was that it also slowed battles down a little, due to the need to spin the wheel on every attack. I think later, IIRC, there was an accessory that allowed you to bypass the wheel but it also made your character weaker at the same time.
Oblivion has a fun mechanic that I exploit, stacking effects with equipment. With the right combination of 4 items I can either get 110% Spell Reflect or 125% Chameleon, both effects are extremely useful for my play style, mages can't do anything to me with one stat and combined with a maxed out sneak I can take out a room full of mobs with out them knowing I'm there. (I just can't do both at once since the items needed use the same equipment slots).
I wonder how that actually works though, 100% chameleon is full invisibility, but you have transcended that amount and become some kind of surrounding view absorber or something.
The game lists stats over 100%, but caps off there, the only reason why the listing is over is because the items I use have fixed stats. Anyway, I thought up more game mechanics I like: Reflect Damage/Spells - Many games have this and its funny to have an attacking mobs hurt itself when it targets you. I mentioned this for Oblivion, but my best one was in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance when a black-mage used his level 3 fire spell on my entire party and the reflect stat triggered, he wound up hitting himself 5 times. FriendlyFire (For Hostile Mobs) - Again found in a a lot of games, any time mobs can hurt each other I exploit this with their own crossfire. Explosive Objects - Objects that explode when shot make for a great way to take out several mobs at once. This is very common in Fallout 3 since there are a lot of things that can explode and the enemies tend to use them for cover. Vampiric Attacks/Skills - If your attack not only lowers something on a mob, but also boosts the same thing on yourself, this makes for short fights that you gain more of something. When City of Heroes was around my character used a lot of electric attacks and they stole endurance from targets while feeding it back to me, so I was lowering their ability to fight and boosting mine at the same time. Atribite Weaknesses - Most common in the Final Fantasy games, but others have it, basically some attacks do more damage to mobs based on type, attribute, or element, this is something that I exploit to its full extent. Turn mobs against each other - This could be a skill or alignment thing in games, Games made by Bethesda use different factions and mobs attack anyone from opposing ones, for the skill based version A.I. Hacking in Mass Effect 2 turns any machine based mobs against each other. Sabotage - Laying out traps or resetting them is a sneaky way to take out mobs, I do this as much as possible in Fallout 3 by messing with the gun turrets in enemy locations. That is what I have so far, I may have more later on if I think of any.
@LazerRay : Reflect is Legendary in the Final Fantasy franchise. THE coolest Reflect Dance boss I ever saw was in FFX, the Zanarkand Guardian. If you weren't overpowered and if you were somewhat low level, that fight had an ingenious AI. It went something like this: As the fight starts, you will quickly notice that it is a fan of casting Curaga on itself. Needless to say, this makes it very difficult to kill it without Reflect, which you are obviously supposed to cast on him. However, when you do THAT, he starts trying to cast Reflect on your group (to bounce Curaga off of one of your group members). You need to dispel this ASAP, before he gets a turn. However... he also has an AoE Silence and Confuse attack, so hopefully you got plenty of items to cure those. At some point, he changes tactics and starts trying to Dispel himself to get a Curaga off (which means you need to keep his Reflect up). It's very much a game of Dispelling, Reflecting, and avoiding him Curaga'ing himself at all costs, while avoiding the confuse and silence attacks. As for Oblivion and turning people against each other... the brawls in the Imperial City are legendary when a thief goes to steal from a guard, and a guard accidentally hits a mage, and now you got mages vs guards, and then a normal townsfolk accidentally gets hit, and pretty soon... nobody is left alive in the whole city.
One of the things I love about Undertale are the Anti-Frustration mechanics. Stuck on Papyrus? He'll pity you and let you progress forward after your third defeat. Struggling with the game? Head to Temmie Village and get the Temmie Armor! It restores HP, has high defense, and its price lowers every time you die, making it cheaper the more you need it. Fighting Omega Flowey? You get a checkpoint for every Soul Attack you survive.
And of course, during said checkpoint segments, you cannot actually die no matter how many times you get hit.
Something fun to try out the next time you play the game. Spoilers just in case someone still haven't play it. You remember that Hotlands was just a setup so you will become friends with Alphys? Well it is litterally impossible to lose the game at any point in Hotlands until you go into the Core area. Try killing yourself by answering wrong in the quiz, no killing. Try to do horribly in the cooking show, there was an advertisement being play. Try not even moving when you need to disarm the bombs, they will all magically get disarmed anyway. At no point during Hotland are you able to actually lose.
Just to make sure that this is not misinterpreted... it is still possible to die in battle against random enemies.
O yea that is true. My bad if I mislead anyone if they thought otherwise. Only work with anything in Hotlands directly dealing with Alphys. I'm not sure if there are any normal battles beside the quiz where death isn't an automatic lost with the exception of Papyrus boss battle which I would highly recommend losing multiple times as he is such a sweetheart and it is totally worth checking out at least once. While some people may not like the idea of it I would also recommend killing Undyne in a normal run at least once as I personally found it to be much more sadder than her death in a genocide run.
Doom. Not the recent remake. Old school-original flavor Doom. Doom had Monster Infighting. Get one enemy to shoot another, and they do their work for you. Entire stages were built around triggering infighting between monsters because you do not have the means to kill them all yourself. There was nothing more awesome than getting an Invulnerability sphere, riling up a room of Demons, Cacodemons, Barons of Hell, and a Cyberdemon, then bailing out of the room before your invulnerability wore off and listening to the absolute monster-on-monster warfare going on inside. Naturally, the Cyberdemon would always be the lone survivor, but by the time it was over he'd be a shadow of his former self. One or two rockets or a light peppering of the plasma gun would finish him off.
I notice changes to RPG mechanics the most, because RPGs have the most potential for bland and samey gameplay. As much as I adore Golden Sun, it's definitely an offender of that; by the end of the game, each character has a "best move" they use every turn, and that's that. Every turn's the same. With that in mind, here are my favorite mechanics that change that: Paper Mario - "Action Commands," where you have to perform special inputs with perfect timing to maximize the effects of your attacks. Even when you're picking the same move every time, it's still engaging and interactive. Megaman Battle Network - Out of combat, you build a deck of attacks/moves and customize your character. Combat is real-time, but you pause periodically to get a random hand of five moves you can use. Depending on how you built your deck, you can take multiple moves for your next turn. Combat is equal parts planning long-term, strategizing short-term, and real-time gameplay. Bravely Default - Somehow they made an RPG with optional pay-to-win microtransactions, a game mechanic where you put the game down and don't play it, and a combat system where half of it is pressing the 'defend' button, and they made it work brilliantly. Every turn, you gain an action point. You can spend your action points to use moves, but you can "Default" to raise your defense and save your action point for next turn, or you can "Brave" to spend up to four action points. If your action points go into the negatives, you can't move until they return to zero. Your enemies can also Brave and Default. (You can spend all your points in one go, but what will you do if the enemy guards that turn?) Radiant Historia - Enemies are placed on a grid. Your attacks can shuffle them around, and if you get enemies onto the same tile, your attacks will hit all of them at once. You can also delay your turn, and exchange turns with your allies. The more turns you take consecutively, the larger of a damage modifier your attacks will get, but it also means that if something goes wrong with your big combo of consecutive attacks, you're at more risk because you used all your moves in one go. It's hard to explain, so here's a video of this one: Link The World Ends With You - "The Nintendo DS has two screens? Hey, that's awesome! Two screens means two video games, right?"
