Favorite SRPG

[Mr. Hadwick]

Wait, people actually like FFTA's story? I mean beside because it makes marche looks like an egotistic evil asshole (the best)?

Also the reason I love FFTA2's story was because... it's exactly what I would do in a fantasy world, no stupid irrational "oh god oh god I have to get home my friends don't agree with me I guess I should kill them heeheeheehee I can't wait to tear asunder the world my friend has created without even addressing his issues." Just plain simple fun in a plain simple game.

Also, those complaining about FFTA2's bazar, just abuse the shit out of the auctions and you'll never have to go searching for bazar items.

 

[vonFiedler]

The auction was even more tedious.

I liked how impotent they made the laws, but for fuck's sake they should have just axed them.

A2 was not a bad game, it was just mediocre. It made it so that individual actions didn't give experience or JP, which I very much approve of (because for the first time, fights were fights and not farms). It introduced some cool classes, but some new ones were even more samey and ubiquitous, and no effort whatsoever was put into the new races (fuck the Seeq anyway).

It had more quests than you could ever want to play, which was good and bad. It was nice that quests weren't just about killing anymore, it made you feel like a real mercenary if real mercenaries were 10.

 

[Fishy]

the auction was easy, once you got to the point where you could just buy a fuck ton of tokens or whatever to buy out all the good shit.

My favorite SRPG is hands down Fire Emblem. I can't even count how many times I've played through on FE7, although I don't think I've fully finished HHM yet... I may currently be in such a save state, I'll have to go check. I am IN LOVE with FE6. It has so many of my favorite characters ever (Sophiaaaaaaaaaaa) and it is definitely the hardest Fire Emblem game that I've played, out of 6-11. Hard mode on FE6 is just ridiculous. I ordered both FE9/10 from Game stop or something, and as soon as those games showed up in the mail, I didn't really see the sun for small pockets of time. I had my wisdom teeth out August of 2009, and when I wasn't sleeping or eating apple sauce, I was staying up until 6AM with my eyes glued to the TV playing FE10, until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. Gah, good times. I need to revisit 9/19 very badly, Hibernate with them until winter is fuggin' finished.

 

[Thorns]

i like ffta2 because it is really fun and colourful but the story is kind of lame

but it has the best system of all the final fantasy tactics series (ie. the least abusable)

 

[AInfinity]

I haven't played many SRPG. I'd have to say Final Fantasy Tactics Advance1/2. Very neat races and classes.

Does Atlantica Online count? That one I found was okay, but it got really grindy at around level 70.

 

[petrie911]

Fire Emblem, what else? My favorite is 10, though I also really like 5 and wish they would bring back a lot of its mechanics. Which makes me probably the only person in world who *liked* the fatigue system.

Uhhhhhh, I don't really like Fire Emblem because the ones that i played were all to easy.

...Which ones did you play? Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance?

 

[Brammi]

See there was this problem. I played FE7 and 8.

They were brilliant. FE8 is one of my all time favorite games. (to easy, ya ya. THEN GIVE YOURSELF CHALLENGES!!!)

Anyways I then tried really hard to play FFTA and Tactics Ogre. I couldn't play them. You know why. They weren't FE. I found myself thinking, f*** this imma go play the better SRPG. I don't like change so sue me.

There was this game that I played on a PS2 Demo once. I don't think it was that great of a game but it was basically a 3D FE game with a few extra quirks such as manipulting field bonuses and such.

If I remember what it was called I will edit that in here.

EDIT: I think it was one of the Suikoden games.

 

[Immaterial]

Uhhhhhh, I don't really like Fire Emblem because the ones that i played were all to easy.

That's interesting - I do think that they're pretty easy on normal mode, for the most part, but a lot of people actually find them too hard to be playable (which is rather sad, as it's tied for my favorite video game series ever along with Pokémon). I'm also curious about which ones you played, by the way. :)

If I remember what it was called I will edit that in here.

EDIT: I think it was one of the Suikoden games.

Suikoden Tactics, most likely. I haven't played it myself, but since it ties in to the most hated game in the series (Suikoden IV), Tactics probably wasn't very popular. Still, I've heard it's pretty good.

I'm going to be unoriginal and say that Fire Emblem is my favorite SRPG, or indeed, the only SRPG that I've ever really liked. A lot of other games in the genre are bogged down by an unnecessarily large amount of statistics and grinding, and I can't stand generic units either. FE is pretty much the opposite of that - simplistic, and relies more on strategizing than anything else. I absolutely love the fact that IS give all characters their own unique personalities and backstories, too (well - not in all of the games, I suppose, but in most of them). Out of the ones I've played (4, 6-10) 9/10 are my favorites, but that's mostly personal preference, I think.

Oddly enough, I've never been able to get into Advance Wars, despite it being made by the same developer as FE. Then again, it's technically not an SRPG.

As for other SRPGS I've played:
Shining Force: I only played this game once, when I was very young, but I have some fond memories of it. It definitely has some similarities to FE, I think - no generic units, fairly simple and easy to understand, etc. Looks like most of the games in the series weren't translated into english, which is a shame.
FFTA: ugh. I couldn't play through this; I just didn't enjoy it at all. Pretty much exemplifies everything I dislike about SRPGs, really. I suppose it can be interesting to watch experienced players break the game, but playing it normally? Nah. Tons of stats and a generally confusing system makes it hard to play, at least for me. In addition to that, it's painfully slow (both the menus and the animations) and the story makes no sense.
Valkyrie Profile: CotP: most people haven't heard of this one, but it's actually a fairly interesting game. Basically, the game is turn-based for the most part, but the combat is in real time - ie whenever you attack an enemy, you go to a battle screen where you have to enter commands to make your characters perform the actual attacks, Valkyrie Profile-style. The plot is a bit too bleak for my tastes (I tend to enjoy more lighthearted stories), and there's not very much of it, but it's certainly better than nothing. As an added bonus, all characters are unique - yay!

 

[comatthew6]

Advance Wars is quite good also.

I love Advance Wars, but I don't think it really qualifies as an SRPG because there really aren't any qualities of an RPG (like Pokemon), unless you count the rank / skills thing ...

 

[vonFiedler]

I played Sacred Stones for the GBA. It had its merits, but there were things that I just didn't like about it. Permanent character death is so hard to avoid, and I can't stand to let anyone die so I'd end up replaying sections over and over again with the most minute differences and the most defensive play possible. I'd have to replay segments for hours and that just was not fun. You'd think the solution was to grind, but the problem with that is something that is almost a never a good idea, weapon degradation. Good weapons were so expensive that grinding did not pay for itself at all. Then for an otherwise simple RPG, character advancement was such an obtuse and unexplained mechanic. If I didn't look it up online I wouldn't have been able to advance everyone the way I would have liked.

So was I just playing the wrong Fire Emblem, cause I know it wasn't the best game in the series. It just didn't sell me at all.

 

[Firestorm]

I didn't think people who liked FFTA more than FFT existed. First time for everything I guess!

 

[vonFiedler]

I have a stronger attachment to my party when there is more variety and less guest characters. What can I say. I'd love to pit my FFTA group against the kind of challenges in FFT.

 

[lilyhollow]

I played FFT a couple months ago and found it... good? Certainly not amazing or anything, and the translation made me throw up blood (not that I'm an expert on translations or anything, but seriously, Jesus).

My main gripe was with how weirdly luck-based it seemed. There would be levels where your goal was to kill one "boss" enemy. So I'd just go all-in with my strongest units, or abuse Flare or whatever. A lot of times I would be killed because I mean, going all-in is kind of retarded, but it didn't matter that much because I could just do it all over again and get "lucky" (oh good, killing this unit lets [main character] charge Flare before dying). In maps where that wasn't the win condition, you'd still be able to reach a sort of "critical point" where you could stop caring about your units dying, because you could feasibly revive them with Phoenix Downs repeatedly.

There also isn't much of a consistent "logic" I can fall back on from map to map. What I mean by this is that, when I lose in Fire Emblem, I almost always feel like I did something "wrong" that I can intuitively identify as a poor strategic move ("yeah okay, not pairing Pent with a decent physical attacker here is kind of dumb, let me fix that"). You do get that on some level in Tactics, but there's also a big element of "oh okay, looks like, for some reason that I could not have reliably predicted, the AI is uncompromisingly obsessed with attacking this one particular unit of mine. Guess next time I'll try killing him first."

So, to me, the most interesting aspect of the game was trying to build up interesting units. I didn't get nearly as much of that as I'd have liked, though. I made my main character a Black Mage, and tried to build up basically one solid unit of every other non-magical class. And they were all kind of outclassed by Agrias, a character who was awesome as soon as I recruited her. Phooey. =( Near the end of the game they gave me yet another, even stronger knight character. I don't even remember what he looked like or what his actual class was, or if he had any important role in the story-- but he was like, hands-down my best unit! So my party was almost always just my main character, some filler support characters, and then the awesome pre-packaged monsters the game gave me. I still have no idea whether Monks or Thieves are even slightly worth using, and I'm pretty sure White Mages and Knights are just completely outclassed. It was a little fun mixing and matching different abilities and stuff, but even that was somewhat undermined by the weird, "just explode everything or whatever" style of combat.

Not that I have like a ton of experience with the game or whatever. Maybe people who have gone through multiple playthroughs have different experiences, but I thought the game was pretty shallow for how complicated it was!


Anyway, so far FE7 is my favorite SRPG (9 is really good too). I have very little experience with the genre so far, though, so whatever.

 

[vonFiedler]

I don't know how you could think White Mages are outclassed, being healers and having the strongest spell in the game. You probably didn't get any calculators, but calculating Holy is so absurd that it becomes very dull quite fast.

There's no luck to how spells charge either, that's all based on the speed of the spell and not only is it easy to do the math yourself if you look it up, but if you press left or right you'll see when the spell will take effect (only Jump doesn't do the work for you, for some mad reason). Spell charging is actually another thing they should have kept in Advance, that I forgot to put in my list.

 

[MofoPopo]

I played Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance (probably didn't try any harder difficulties)

In FFT I like the level grinding. It gives me something to do when I'm bored, and I don't abuse Orlandeau or anything, So grinding took a long time and was fun when I was bored.

I can see what people are saying about FE, But I guess I never liked it much and I played Shining Force 1 & 2 which are about the same type of battling, only I found them much more enjoyable.

I just think the majority of the people haven't played FFT all the way through or didn't get the full experience that some people did.

Memories make me want to go back and make me do an SCC of all these games

 

[lilyhollow]

@vonFiedler:

I liked Summoners a whole lot more than White Mages. I have no idea how good Holy is though, and am confused as to what a Calculator is (reading up on them now), so I could easily be wrong. >_>

And I'm aware of how spells work; by "luck" I'm referring to like, I could be one turn away from just completely obliterating the strongest enemy on the map with Flare, and then have my Black Mage die at the last second. And then I just try again, do things slightly differently, and get a super quick victory instead. It's weird to have that sort of dynamic, where the difference between complete success and complete failure can be determined by so little.

 

[vonFiedler]

I just think the majority of the people haven't played FFT all the way through or didn't get the full experience that some people did.

That's not a good thing to say about a game. Though I disagree, Tactics is a classic and alot of people know it. Advance is another fan favorite. I don't think A2 will ever have the kind of fanbase that either Tactics or Advance have.

I always used my Summoner to attack, giving them short charge and wiping out groups with Bahamut. Fun times.

 

[TaiCrunch]

I've got really mixed feelings about the FFTA games.

I really didn't like abilities being connected to weapons in FFTA/2. Strangely enough, I really liked it in Final Fantasy IX so when I first saw it I was like all right, cool. But as soon as I started trying to figure out the mechanics of the game I saw how much it did not work with the class system at all. I would much rather have kept the JP system.

Laws are just bullshit. I was in this one battle in FFTA2 where one of the laws was, shit you not, "being robbed." You know who I was fighting? Six thieves. what the fuck.

I still don't know how I feel about charging vs. instant cast. Instant cast is a lot more convenient and doesn't fuck me over when I aim for a specific unit, but charging adds a whole new level of strategy to the game, which I loved.

 

[vonFiedler]

Tying abilities to weapons helped to make it so that you weren't just exploiting your way to mastering a character's job classes. It was never an issue in Advance, though in A2 it felt like all the time I had characters not learning anything because I didn't have the right weapons.

I do prefer charging, to be honest. It really goes hand in hand with how ranged characters worked too, those nuances made Tactics really cool. I just really hate faith, brave, and the zodiac signs.

 

[Myzozoa]

I would say that ogre battle: march of the black queen is both my favorite, and easily in the top 20 of all time. Lots of content, and its just a very interesting game in general. Surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet.

 

[TaiCrunch]

I never understood what Zodiac signs were supposed to do? I never ran into any problems or benefits.

 

[vonFiedler]

They impose very arbitrary percent bonuses and penalties to quite a variety of actions. The biggest problem is with Thief, where you'll really want a Thief with just the right zodiac signs when stealing from certain tough enemies. Take the Elmdor fight for example. It's not a hard fight at all if you have Orlandu, but even then it is grueling trying to steal all his genji equipment (and learn Ultima from his assassins).

Alot of the best items have to be stolen, or are found through the really stupid move find item ability. Where not only do you need a guide to know where to go, but the lower your brave the higher the chance of getting a truly good item. So on all levels of the Deep Dungeon I need to run around a character with 10 brave hoping that I fulfill the 90% chance for all 4 items on the level, all while not killing all the monsters because that's not how you progress in the Deep Dungeon. And when you have all the best items, well, tough shit because all that is left is the last few missions which are pretty easy regardless.

I'd still do all it again before trying get all best equipment in FF12 again.

 

[Engineer Pikachu]

I've never played Fire Emblem and I've only played FFXII, which I didn't really like for some reason (gasp). Don't kill me.

My favorite SRPG is probably Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. I played it one or two years ago, and the first runthrough was sooo fun. I loved the storyline, the character/monster artwork, and the intricacy of the entire game. The battling mechanics were really cool, too.

Something else that I found fun was The World Ends with You, though it didn't seem quite as fun as SMT. I didn't really like the battling system with the pins, and the main character started pissing me off after a while since he was being so emo.