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Hey Design Doc. When you say Banjo Tooie has ridiculous scale when I thought the games size makes the interconnected world really impressive! Can you please elaborate on how bigger more varied worlds make collecting and backtracking problematic?
From experiencing how Rivalry works in Pokemon, and with misogyny basically being that but in reverse, I just know they'll be punching the air every time a platoon comprised of only men rolls up. _"No, my +25% damage! Now I'll only have _*_-25%_*_ damage this entire mission!"_
Moon logic was cited from that I believe. Still Its funny but like MetaZoo, it becomes arbitrary to discover or even play them. The turnabout or counterplay was important for the card game. Later field spells evoked that slight bonus. Still fun to witness it played. The type advantage like YGO Sacred Cards or Reshef of Destruction made it interesting. Although their downside was the card cost system. Either way that system was interesting and famous in Forbidden Memories.
The power bonus granted by fields was mostly consistent, at least: a 30% boost to Attack and Defense to certain monster types if that terrain existed at all. The monster types affected even carried over to the physical game, though the boost was an addition rather than a multiplier. How the terrain changes... that can be another story.
It's such an interesting mon. Too bad it has pretty meh stats, and its forms don't change its stats around for some reason. Bulky Rain Castform, Hard hitting Sun Castform, and Fast Snow Castform should be a thing yesterday.
6:48 I think the system being haphazard works in it's favor. Different weather isn't just "buff one type nerf another". It's like yeah, fire type Pokémon would be weaker in the rain obviously. Of course fighting on a hailstorm would hurt, and some Pokémon are more ready for these scenarios than others. I think it's a great lesson to not apporach mechanics like this as "Every type has its own advantageous weather", but moreso "outside factors affect the battle and some characters are more ready than others"
An unfortunate trait of Battle Network and its spiritual successor Star Force, is that a lot of its final bosses do not interact with the field at all, as they're just floating in the air. So if you've built your strategy around some sort of field combo, like grass panels and fire attacks, you're out of luck.
A lot of RPGs walk right into the exact same failing, unfortunately. "Are you having fun with these super creative utility moves? Well, better scrap it and bring out a meta uunga buunga strategy quick, because the final boss(es) are huge dps checks that are completely immune to non-damaging moves!" Hell, some games just skip the middle ground and make _all_ the bosses immune to non-damaging moves.
Hell, some final bosses _removes_ the field in their side, making _most_ chips useless for attacking. And they're often the _only_ bosses that does it, including postgame superbosses (which often floats, but at least the ground's there), so you got no prior warning that your deck is a shit brickhouse.
RE: Chrono Cross's field mechanic. A lot of people don't know you can cancel your attack and end a turn early, switching to another one of your party members. If you want to summon, you need to attack less and switch more, giving the enemies less chance to cast spells to screw it up. If you find yourself going into the negatives, that's why.
@@themoreno2600 I personally have a VERY soft spot for 5, because it's the first of the series I played, because it had a version for the DS One of the best things Capcom has EVER made (and there's quite a few things on the list)
In Magical Starsign you had planets moving and if the stars aligned (literally) you'd deal more damage with the respectice element...I think, it's been like 15 years since i've played it
Omg Magical Starsign mentionned There's also the fact that depending on whether your characters are in the front row or back row, their spells will change between single-target and AoE (with different spells having different kinds of AoE, from damage being split equally, to damage focusing the front row or hitting a random enemy a certain amount of times) It's a really fun system
Omg memory unlocked, I’ve been looking for Magical Starsign! I got it at a swap meet when I was in middle school and lost it without ever learning the name. Thank you for solving that mystery I forgot about!
I love seeing so many of my favorite games all in one video. Megaman Battle Network, Steamworld Heist, Unicorn Overlord, Valkyria Chronicles... I feel so seen here.
Pokemon and MMBN's robust competitive scenes makes them an excellent suggestion for any turn-based-combat aficionados to research, as they're basically status conditions and therefore are not that hard to implement. Good stuff as always!
The Disgaea series make terrain an integral part of how you tackle a map. Like everything else in the game it is meant to be thoroughly abused. Some map effect can be used to to effectively make your unit invincible while you chip away at monsters that you boosted to get more exp.
EBF5's weather are just like Pokémon's, but on steroids. Everyone gets a stack wet/chill/dry. Random chance of getting doomed (ticks down until it instantly kills you). Random chance of extra turn. Everyone gets a debuff protection. Huge debuff on defensive stats to everyone. Huge buff to offensive stats to everyone. There are SO many, and they're SO fun! Some bosses are extra tough to deal with because of weather, and having a summon to override it with a favorable one is how I beat most bosses on Epic difficulty. Definitely my favorite "mix up" for JRPG battles
You should definitely do a video on card games. I say this because of my new favorite game, WildFrost, but I do think it would be interesting. You could go over how games with deck-building systems work or how games can make card game modes of themselves. Bloons TD Battles has a very unique card game mode that completely changes how you play the game. You could go over how pokemon made an actual card game... I think it could be fun
Mario and Rabids: Sparks of hope makes terrain interesting by letting you freely roam a certain area, even getting in bonus damage on some enemies if they are in range
Terrain effects are extremely fun to use. Fe for example the developers hiding one tile of tree or something can basically swing the game around in your favor and make a high dodge unit a dodge machine. Engage wise corrin and camilia being able to on base change the terrain is actually very cool for getting ready for a counter attack Pokemon has some interesting terrain boosts. Each weather gives those nice bonuses to specific mons but it is a double edged sword sometimes like sunny day and rain dance as solar beam is faster but fire moves are stronger same with water moves being better but thunder always hits. It's pretty good design
Advance Wars making terrain stars which can make unit survive damage that normally destroy them, forrest, reefs (and more tiles in Days of Ruins) hiding units in Fog of War, litteraly make COs that change the weathers, a CO that have broken day to day passive of units running though harsh terrain easily like it's walking in the park, a CO based on terrains but get ignored because it's a strategy game instead RPG game : 🥲
I’ve had an idea for an RPG where fighting enemies underwater makes lightning spells target everyone, even yourself, and fire spells do nothing of course. Most of the enemies underwater are water-types that are weak to lightning so whether you’re willing to damage yourself just to kill them sooner is up to you(there’d also be ways to work around it, like lightning-resistant armor or reflection spells)
Small fire spells would do nothing, but in theory big enough fire spells should still do damage because hot water still hurts a ton. (And also underwater explosions are a thing) Being wet helps channel electricity, and perhaps small bodies of water, but in big ones the electricity would disperse and it'd just tingle a bit. Unless, of course, the lightning spell is big enough.
Fire Emblem plays with terrain a lot too, since it's a turn based tactic JRPG. Basically the games give you certain tiles that heal, damage or give specific buffs and debuffs to whoever might be standing on or near them, be it your units or the enemy ones. FE10 has healing bushes that heal for 10% of a unit's HP if a unit stands on it, healing jars in an early map that heal 20% for up to four units surrounding it, etc., with bushes also granting avoid bonuses, making them essential spots to take control over. But some terrain ends up limiting the movement of your units, making them obstacles to reach an objective instead, despite the bonuses they may confer. Rafiel, for example, cannot traverse bushes when he's transformed, making his ability to make up to 4 units move twice in a turn mute if you transform him at the wrong time and place. Depending on the game, flying units can bypass most obstacles that reduce or prevent movement, given the fact they fly above them, but at the same they will not enjoy the bonuses these tiles grant as a trade of (though it also means they will not suffer penalties or take damage for tiles that debuff or set your units aflame either). Similarly, units that attack with magic will not have their Hit rate affected if an enemy receives terrain bonus for avoid and defense, but they will still receive the bonuses if they are the ones standing on them. Fire Emblem has always played with terrain that affects allies and foes alike, requiring the player to think about how they can remove the enemy unit from those points that grant them the advantage or lure the enemies into tiles that debuffs and/or damages them.
Bahamut lagoon is an old Rpg from the last days of the SNES in 1996. Its various types of terrain that could do things like slow block movement, which is effected each squad has a dragon which can fly but isn't directly controlled, heal all units, do damage. You also, you, and your enemies can effect the terrain in various ways such as destroying walls with lightning to open up the map, setting a forest on fire, destroying bridge an enemy in on and dropping them into the void, curing poisonous swamp etc.
Larian Studios previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 had even more environment interaction. I can only refer to Electrified Cursed Blood Cloud. So metal.
Super Robot Wars has a lot of terrain that is mostly subtle but that plays into the mecha concept of the series. Terrain is in four categories: land, sky, water, and space, and each has their own unique mechanics. Land lets you get certain bonuses like increased defense or the ability to get healing or EN resupplied, but it also requires you take into account that it might impact mobility compared to flying, as you might normally expect. Water has a mechanic where it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of beam-type weaponry. What's extra interesting about how Super Robot Wars does it is that each mecha, pilot, and weapon has their own terrain ratings (in a lot of games pilots don't have terrain ratings because most of them are unit-locked but in OG games most of the roster can swap between units so it makes sense for them to have ratings), where some perform better in different types of terrain. Some, like the Getter Robo, can switch their terrain specialty on the fly, some you might be able to specifically alter a loadout before a map (like games with Nadesico, the Aestivalis has 0G, Flight and Ground frames - that are mostly the same, except the Flight is more fragile than the 0G and Ground frames, and the 0G is only good in space or water terrain) and some you need option parts to use well. It can get interesting in that when you have the options you might choose to do weird things when the tactics call for it. If there are a lot of enemies loaded out with beam weaponry, you may choose to dive your units under the water even if they have bad terrain ratings there, because it's a better defensive option. You might choose to give an option part for a unit with bad space performance even if it has a configuration to use in space if the ground-based variant is stronger (Scopedog). Sometimes there even are unique animations based on different terrain ratings like Dai-Guard being able to use its famous "rocket punch" if it uses Drill Arm while on the ground against an aerial enemy. Terrain in Super Robot Wars is not huge as a gameplay mechanic - at most it's like a 10% modifier to accuracy or evasion (in a game with Spirit Commands) but it puts in a lot of work to really drive home the feel of mecha anime.
This is one of my favorite channels. I love learning more about games and some of this is even workable into my writing, book style writing. Keep up the great work!
the thumbnail makes it look like they're gonna fight and that's amusing to me for what a mismatch is, probably not in the direction a lot of people would expect it to be
I don't know if this counts but in The World Ends with you for the DS, you get to control both characters in 2 different screens, up screen with D-pad (or buttons) and bottom screen with the stylus. I really like that because you can make combos on the up screen that leads to a powerful duo attack. Also there is an Interesting gimmick that the pins and clothes you use depends on what's the trend in that section, if is trend you get bonus stats, if not you don't. But if you fight enough Noises you can make everything you're using a trend and get those bonuses.
I honestly thought this was gonna be about coliseum/arena side modes in RPGs. This is much more interesting, and something I've considered before for my own ideas, but never been sure how to make it worthwhile and not an annoyance.
When I think of neat battlefields in RPGs, Dragon Ball Fusions is a game that instantly springs to mind. Hitting enemies hard enough makes them rocket across the field, and you enable follow-up attacks by hitting the enemy in the direction of a party member. You can also ricochet them off walls.
19:30 'Everyone is different. No two people are the same. Some people are about to be run over. Frankie has about five seconds.' The 4th and 5th Wild Arms games did something similar to Paper Mario where each fight generates a random set of 7-8 hexagons that characters move between. Elemental magic is much weaker if you don't use it atop an elemental ley Hex. Buffs, ailments and debuffs only apply to that hex, so you can move off or onto it. Characters provide buffs to each other when they're together on the same hex, but that allows enemies to attack you both at once, and vice versa. Characters must also be on the same hex to use their combo attacks, and there are spells that specifically move allies or enemies around to different spots. This system had a lot of potential and I've always felt it could have been tapped into more with a 6th proper game.
Honestly I think that 5 was a "one step forward, two steps back" for the HEX system, because while did innovate in having different configurations of the battlefield, it also did less with the mechanic as a whole because of the way the party is handled. WA4 giving each character something unique that interacts with the mechanic (Jude being able to attack from 2 spaces, Raquel being able to move and attack in the same turn, Arnaud being able to jump to reposition multiple characters, and Yulie having the most interaction with the elemental HEXes) was more or less scrapped in favor of customizability and party members that are more defined by how their interactions work with direct RPG mechanics rather than the HEXes but I preferred 4's method.
@WhiteFangofWar 'Some people have rigged the enemy base with explosives. Albert has.' I still regularly think "no two people are not on fire" whenever I play some sort of fire mage.
Seeing the Trails clip at the beginning actually sent me for a few seconds. I've been watching for years, and I think that was the first time I saw a Trails clip in one of your videos! I'd love for a video on world-building with Trails as the center piece, tho talking about the series without going into at least medium spoilers seems tough...
I saw the title, and immediately thought of BG3. My current run is taking an emphasis on the specific mechanics of the game, particularly surfaces. And oh man is Spike Growth nutty.
I had a mostly unintentional ice floor strategy by the end of the game. I summoned water myrmidons to spam healing mist for free heals on the party which left puddles, Gale was basically an ice wizard because of the gear I found, and most of my characters could either fly or teleport away from the dangerous terrain with no effort. Comedy would then ensue as bad guys fell down and lost their turns.
I really like the additional bonus we get from terain such as psychic terrain shuts down priority moves and boosts expanding force. Or electric terain keeps everyone awake and they can't fall asleep.
Tales of the Abyss had the "Field of Fonons" mechanic - casting multiple spells of the same element creates a glowing circle colored with that element, and then if a character stands in the field and uses a special move, the special move gets upgraded into a stronger elemental attack. And since it's a Tales game and characters are free to run around the battlefield, setting up that positioning actually takes some work and makes for interesting tactics.
I remember Disgaea having a very fun mechanic about changing the color of certain terrain to cause damage to enemies, or accidentally damage your own units with the same color change. I'd talk about it but haven't played Disgaea in so long I don't quite remember.
Xenoblade X had a boss enemy located in a cave. But the location of it is hovering over a pit of lava, and you can only stand on the pillars over the lava. It was a very difficult boss because the AI teammates keep falling into the lava. It was certainly a memorable fight.
This was neat. I clicked into this expecting a discussion of aesthetics and immersion and instead learned interesting things about the mechanical aspects of settings.
Ground mechanics instantly make me think of Civilization. It's not an RPG, but it applies many core themes/mechanics that can come from certain. Different terrains have different outputs (Desserts and tundra produce less food, mountains are impassable, etc.). But it goes beyond those ideas, too. Some civilizations do better in "poor" environments than others, such as Canada in tundras or Mali in deserts. However, the game takes the mechanics terrain further, integrating it into combat and movement. Cliffs, for instance, can be a strategic advantage, reducing movement unless you have levelled up units. Rivers not only impede movement but also weaken non-ranged attacks, adding a layer of strategy. On the other hand, hills slow movement but give an advantage to combatants atop them, and forests can be a tactical hindrance, slowing travel and impeding escapes/retreats. Terrain even changes based on the environment and is not static. As climate change increases, low-laying land can flood and become un-usable, droughts and tornados can hit plains, volcanos can destroy buildings but supply nutrients for farming, and rivers can flood, causing harm to people and infrastructure but also allowing for enhanced crop yields and the ability to generate power through water mills and hydroelectric dams. If fruitful areas get nuked, they can become ruined by nuclear fallout.
The Battle Network series have a bit more with terrain, like the unbreakable Metal Panels that doubles the power of electric moves, Holy panels which halves all damage for someone standing on it, heck, even holes had their uses like several powerful chips using the nearest hole in front of Megaman as targets or the Snake chip which shoots out homing snakes out of holes on your field, famous for being the bullying tool of Gutsman who uses the Geddon chip, a chip that breaks every panel. There are also mechanics specifically used to mitigate the negative effects of terrain, the Floatshoes that disable most negative panels like the poisonous swamp panel or lava panel and the Airshoes which lets you walk on hole panels
I absolutely love what Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth did with the combat arena, specifically IW, as it even makes your party members a hazardous part of the environment or a dangerous partner for a team up attack if close enough. Not to mention the ability to walk up to and pick up various objects in the environment to use as weapons. It all adds up to an incredibly engaging battle system that keeps even basic fights interesting.
Since I do this near every applicaple video... The game idea I have would put monsters on the field like in Chrono Trigger, and starting an encounter would draw hexes on the field, since I wanted the game to have characters able to walk around, adding a tactical element in aiming attacks that CT didn't. There'd also be obstacles and verticals depending on where the fight's happening.
The Light and Shadow environmental mechanics found in Eternal Sonata are also a really interesting complication! Really fun impacts on gameplay and strategy.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is one of the more engaging RPG battle arenas. Proximity Bonus, Back Attacks, Launchers, Team Attacks, Environmental Hazards, Street Weapons all make the RPG combat feel more tactical and "in the moment".
This reminds me to old game called Mines of Titan, a turn based RPG with futuristic theme. The battle field is different for each battle (well maybe except for final one) making each battle unique. What defines the field is where you encounter enemies which is random. Another game worth mentioning is Disgaea. It looks like typical turn based RPG however most fields have colored tiles with certain perks. This could give advantage or disadvantage to player or enemy or even both. Player could remove these tiles by destroying respective colored pyramids but it has great side effect.
I would like to mention of a hidden gem, Eternal Sonata. The game has the arena have light and dark areas, ex: under the sunshine or in the shades. These two areas affect the available movesets for team members and even the attributes of the enemies. I had so much fun even just the demo only!
When it comes to terrain mechanics, we gotta talk about one of the earliest in Live A Live. It was basically Square's first time doing something different with their RPGs and while simple it laid the foundation for all that came after, especially FF Tactics
An interesting one for me is yokai watch 3’s 3x3 grid based combat. Its a real time grid based combat system (similar to mega man battle network) where you can chain different yokai, have yokai in front to protect the weaker ones, there are different abilities that effect terrain and linked yokai, and when there are terrain hazards you have to be careful with the path you take when moving around your yokai. I’d really recommend it! It’s one of my favorite 3ds games.
When I saw the title, I thought you were going to talk about in-game arena/colosseum battles. Very interesting video as usual but with two very important mechanics missing: positioning (especiallly in T-RPGs) and terrain changes (burning a forest, freezing a river, etc.)
You should do an episode on Dialogue Boxes. I'm especially curious to see the differences such as where they appear on screen, whether they are accompanied by pictures/portraits, whether they are accompanied by names, what visual indicators they give to let you know you can push a button to end or go to the next part of the dialouge, how often you are given options vs you just are listening/reading, the overall size, how often there is animated text, how often you are able to speed through the text, how often is there audio of the dialogue in addition to the text, how often games mix audio dialogue with text only dialogue, etc... As I work on my game, I was thinking of how to approach them. I looked at some other games. In Starfox 64, there is a character portrait for every dialouge. But for Paper Mario 64, there seems not only to be no portrait, but there is no name attached. In Hollow Knight, there are no portraits, but there are names for each dialogue. Same thing with Nanotale, although Nanotale's appears on the bottom and Hollow Knights appears on the top I think. I imagine that games like Paper Mario don't show names/portraits because they'd rather just show the character on screen and showing both is redundant, which means less room for text or the text would then have to be smaller. By getting rid of the portrait, they can make room for more text or bigger text. In games like Starfox, you essentially NEVER actually see the characters; you only see the ships, and even then, you barely see your NPC's ships. Therefore, I think it was important for them to show the characters in the dialogue boxes, as it's pretty much the only way you get to see/know the characters.
That potential mechanic in Valkyria Chronicles sounds cool. I really like seeing little stuff like bonuses and technical playing into characters personalities in videogames, like how some characters in Samurai Showdown have different reactions to killing attacks like horror, remorse, or moving on. Makes me think of Disgaea 4's Legendary Tree giving units buffs based on relationships they made.
Shining Force II land effect--depending on a character's class, it can hinder movement a certain amount, but it can also bolster defense. Works for both your party members as well as enemies. LOTS of strategizing (made more challenging because the system that determines turn order is so opaque that it's almost impossible to figure out, oops)
it was about 90% of the way there, so i am almost surprised it wasnt formatted as a sliding scale: from earthbound to disgaea and beyond. From "minimal" effort into where the fights take place (a featureless void), all the way up to the exact genre of games where the level design is synonyms with the gameplay and every tile of terrain has a different effect on battle, from the terrain coverage of fire emblem, to the throwing limitations and geo effects of disgaea. It is there in the footage and subtext, but grid based terrain is limited to megaman battle network which handles the grid system so uniquely that it doesnt quite compare to anything else, and unicorn overlord, which trashes the grid in its entirety.
project x zone 2 has some unique terrain properties, one place you visit early on has a poison swamp that will deal damage to both friendly and enemy units (unless they can fly(but that’s enemy units only)), others have certain hazards or healing spots that will heal both friendly and enemy units. the level’s geometry also has an effect on how a unit can move (cause it’s grid based movement), one map may just be a flat space, while another could have various obstacles that need to be destroyed, or different levels of elevation
In MistWalkers The Last Story a key mechanic is the ability to leave magic Puddles all over the Battle field terrain which can damage or debuff your opponent , or your self if the puddles were left behind by your opponent . You could also sacrifice your terrain advantage to have your party leader splash them through the entire battlefield through Elemental Diffusion.
0:32 Trails in the Sky my beloved! Seriously though, I actually really like how the Trails series handles combat. Whenever you run into an enemy on the overworld, the game shifts to a battlefield where characters, both Allies and Enemies can move around, like a tactical RPG. Positioning matters, spells and abilities often have specific kinds of AOE affects, so you want to pay attention to where your characters are positioned. Group them together so you can cast some powerful buffs, but they might be vulnerable to a boss's powerful AOE attacks. It also means you need to pay attention to what your characters are good at. Mages are more fragile, so you want them to be away from danger, but then they might not benefit from getting speed or damage buffs. You can give mages a higher defense, at the cost of casting weaker spells, or spells costing more energy. Or, you can load up on power and cast speed boosting items and nuke the entire battlefield before the enemy can kill you. Or, you can give the high damage character evasion boosting equipment so that they can run into the center of an enemy formation and counter-attack them into oblivion. I really prefer this style to the traditional style where everyone stands in a line and takes turns hitting each other, there's a lot more tactical consideration and it really lends towards building characters who fill a specific niche.
The title had me thinking that this was going to cover gladiatorial sequences in RPGs such as fighting in the arena in Final Fantasy VII's Golden Saucer. That might make for a good video as well.
It might not be a blown out RPG, but League of Legends feature bushes where you can hide, 6 different dragon effects that take place to modify the map mid game, and also boosts to your team if you manage to beat some epic monsters. Some champions also benefit from having terrain close, like pushing and stunning an opponent against the wall or jumping over a wall to hide and escape (or attack and ambush).
Warframe is a pretty good example of how terrain can be used in a shooter. Because it was originally designed as a stealth game, there are a lot of places that you can go duck into cover in or traverse the map unseen. Because you interact with the environments difference from how your enemies do, you can get rather clever with your movements early in the game. For example, you can use a water jet from a broken pipe to give yourself a quick elevation boost wow your enemies might have to take the stairs or ride underneath a zipline
I like the terrain mechanics of Fossil Fighters (at least the first 2 games). In 1, the RPG combat splits the grid into 4 zones per team: 1 attack zone (AZ), 2 support zones (SZ), and 1 escape zone (EZ). You start battle with a max of 3 dinosaurs on the AZ and SZ. Dinosaurs in the AZ can attack enemy dinosaurs in both the AZ and SZ. Dinosaurs in the SZ can only attack the enemy dinosaur in the AZ, and they have an Attack debuff in that zone (unless it is a long-ranged dinosaur, then the above is ignored). SZ also gives a Def buff and unlocks a SZ dinosaur’s support abilities; these abilities gives buffs and debuffs to the dinosaurs on the AZ on either team, so having good support dinosaurs can help your AZ dinosaurs destroy the battlefield. Lastly, you can move your AZ dinosaur to the EZ, where they are out of range of all attacks and can recover from status effects; however, in doing so, an SZ dinosaur has to move to the AZ, and the EZ dinosaur is stuck there for 3 turns, before being booted out to the SZ. Moving your dinosaurs can help you when the AZ has a bad type matchup or low on health, but it can cause problems to your team setup as it takes around 6 turns to reorient your teams back into position. In Champions (2), the mechanics have changed. Each team now has 6 spots on the grid, shaped as two rings. 3 AZ spots on the front, 3 SZ spots on the back, and no EZ. The grid itself orients everything into 8 columns (4 per team), and the damage advantage is now determine by how far away from each column you are. Close-range dinosaurs deal the most damage at 1 column away, mid-range deal most at 4 columns away, and long-range deal most at 7 columns away. You have 3 dinosaurs, but they’re separated by one spot on the wheel, and you can turn the wheel to orient your dinosaurs to specific spots: one AZ and two SZ (both SZ add their buffs/debuffs together), or two AZ and one SZ (the buffs/debuffs are split in half for both AZs). Managing your positioning and distance becomes critical for this game. Now, Frontiers (3) is where they fucked everything up. The TLDR is that you no longer have control of all 3 dinosaurs, just your main one, and the other two are determined by party members. The grid is now 2x3 squares, your team on the left, enemies on the right, the fastest dinosaurs on the top and the slowest at the bottom. Speed also determines turn order. The dinosaurs can only attack dinosaurs ahead of them or on diagonal spots. You’d think that means the middle is the best spot, but most encounters are against 1-2 enemies only so the top dinosaur has the best range AND attacks fastest. If you have a dinosaur that’s stronger but slower than your teammates, then you will always go last on the battle order, and your range is limited to basically just the middle dinosaur, if there even is one. And because your “team” share the same pool of points (required for moves), the AI will eat up all the points doing their moves before you ever get a chance to attack, and might be forced to skip your turn. There’s no way to move your position, you can just be stuck in an automated battle where you cant do anything until the battle is either over or a teammate loses all its health and frees up a spot to move upwards. Frontiers is very bad, and not just for this.
Pokémon Reborn, Rejuvination, and Desolation are worth mentioning for their field effects having around 40 or so environments or so based on where you're battling. So like if youre fighting in a cave sound based moves will get a huge power boost from echoing and if you use earthquake a couple times there might be a cave in damaging both sides. Or like you can fight underwater and like fire type moves wont work at all and non water types take damage every turn, but then you can use dive to go back to the waters surface field but then like you can use sludge wave a couple times and turn it to mukwater where now poison moves are stronger and grounded pokemon are taking damage and then use blizzard to freeze over the water and now ice type noves are stronger and like all priority moves raise your speed as your gaining momentum from skating on the ice. Like, this is such a good system and adds so much depth and variety to pokemon. theres even some overworld puzzles that require you to change the terrain in battle to progress. Like, it's really really neat and interesting
So glad SteamWorld Heist was in here because SteamWorld Heist II has honestly become one of my new favorite indie games ever up there with Bug Fables and Hades II Heist II expanded on the iconic ricochet mechanic (as well as countless other features that made the game great) to perfection, so I highly recommend checking it out
One extra point for Chrono Cross' element system: The melee attacks of characters deal damage of their innate type: An entirely black field will drop Serge's attack to 33%, and an entirely white field will raise it to 175%
@DesignDoc can you do a video on fighting main characters in rpgs, such as the friends boss battle in Omori or the contestant battles in Fear and Hunger 2?
With JRPGs, I usually base my team around "who is most in need of the exp?" Are some characters in my party way lower level than the others? Is there an optional fight somewhere I can only use certain characters with and not have a full party for story reasons and thus need to make sure those specific characters can hold their own? Is there a character whose usefulness simply doesn't come through until a much later level than everyone else and thus need to grind? Is there a big fight coming up and I need to make sure everyone's special meter is fully charged? I only break that if the boss fight is so tough that I really do need the strategic edge of specific characters. Environments tend to not factor in very much. Though I do remember a specific fight in Legend of Dragoon where there's a giant Snake in a cave. You just barely have enough characters to have a full party at this point in the game, 2 melee fighters and an ranged fighter. The melee do a lot of damage but their magic attack is not great- and the attack items' power is based on magic attack of the turn character. The ranged fighter barely does any damage with her bow but has the highest magic attack in the game. The fight with the giant snake starts off simple enough, like any other boss fight, but then like halfway through it goes though a tunnel and is way up in the air where the melee fighters can't reach it. The ranged fighter can still chip away it it with their abysmal damage each turn, but the melee fighters are stuck either just guarding, healing, or using consumable attack items well below their full power. Sure, the ranged fighter can just use the attack items to their full power, but then you sacrifice the only chance to deal damage for free and instead blow through your consumable a lot faster. And in another fight, there's a boss who sets up a respawning barrier that you have to break before you can damage him- but the game never tells you that, you just try to attack him, realize no damage was dealt, and then realize the barely visible barrier that wasn't there two turns ago is a selectable target.
Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 had some interesting terrain mechanics. In water you would move less spaces, differences in height were actually important since your characters could only jump a set number of spaces. Archers in higher terrain would deal a lot of damage to the units down below. Terrain could obstruct your attacks (for example throwing weapons). There was even a class that could use the battle's terrain to produce different effects, the Geomancer. I'm really surprised that you didn't talk about it. For a game of that era it had very interesting mechanics. I think it deserved a place.
i clicked on this video KNOWING you were gonna talk about ttyd because its so unique and charming that adds extra flair and intrigue to the already great base battle system. small edit: I forgot to even mention the whole glitz pit chapter and how much it plays into the whole thing being a performance. its lovely. especially with the unique conditions to make things more interesting
Honestly, I think FF13 deserves more credit- (responding to the comment about "knowing the solution and just doing it again and again.") Each chapter making you use different party members means it can present different challenges each chapter- and within that chapter, you're going to be swapping paradigms out for a lot of battles, especially when you encounter enemies that force you to question your current strategies. (The ranking system also encourages players to try and excel in battle rather than do the bare minimum too- if you get a low star ranking after a fight, it might push you to ask yourself what you're doing wrong, prompting you to rethink your strategy.) I think FF13-2 is more problematic when it comes to doing the same thing over and over again. 13 is a genuinely difficult game, and that forces you to REALLY think about your options and plan ahead for each battle- an average enemy can feel like a boss fight. But in FF13-2, everything feels like it's made of paper. You can just buff yourself and spam ruinga without thinking. The ranking system is far less refined too, and can either feel unfair in poorly ranking you, or too generous, without the player having any real takeaway from it. Still fun and snappy of course, but it fits that feeling of "Just blow things up, you already know what to do."
The way Chrono Trigger handles encounters is quite refreshing, since it's structured like a classic JRPG, but instead of warping you to a nebulous arena, the fights take place in the area you're exploring. I think the only game to do this in recent years (and to my knowledge) is "I am Setsuna".
Well, I like Panzer Dragoon Saga's battle screen a lot. To the point that it's the game that's made me seriously consider RPGs as a genre- I played it a few weeks ago, and it's the first, and only, RPG I've really gotten into, and it's because of said battle screen. It's a realtime battle system, with four quadrants arranged in a circle that you can move between. Enemies are in the center, and can also move around you, effectively moving you into another quadrant. Enemies also have firing arcs, and some sides of some enemies have a weak point. This combines together to make a very engaging battle system, which is halfway between a classic turn-based non-spacial RPG and a more modern action RPG. It's brilliant, and every time it starts to get stale, they add a new wrinkle to it, like enemies where it makes sense to wait for them to move, arenas where one quadrant is blocked off, or enemies with weak points that only briefly open up inside of an enemy's best firing arc, forcing the player to expose themselves to do the most damage.
World in Conflict, a realy good strategy game developed by Massive Entertainment, uses terrain to affect your units line of sight. like most strategy games enemy units won't show on your minimap until your units have line-of-sight on them. In Wic units vision can be blocked by terrain features, like buildings, hills, forests etc, creating excellent opportunity for abushes. In fact the infantry role in WiC multiplayer is almost entirally build around taking advantage of how unit vision works.
Also, another thing to add about Steamworld haste, is that the game allows headshots and even damaging the legs to reduce enemy mobility. So it's trickshot system is even more emphasized by rewarding shots from below or above.
With regards to pokemon's terrain effects, there's a great fangame, "Pokemon Reborn", that adds a ton of depth to them, and tons of new ones on top of that! The effects are very in depth and powerful, with nearly every major might being designed to take advantage of one of them. You can use them to your advantage as well, or even change the field effect entirely! Using dive on water's surface will bring the battle underwater. Using heat wave or the likes on grassy terrain will turn it into burning field, which you can put out with rain, sandstorm, or a variety of wind moves, completely removing any field from play. And you can temporarily overwrite the field by having a porygon use conversion and conversion 2 back to back, creating glitch field, which is a wacky fusion of modern and gen 1 mechanics. This only really scratches the surface, so if you're looking for ideas on interesting terrain effects, I highly recommend checking it out!
For me it s into the breach. The ennemi and our actions can damage things we dont want. And it s prêts dynamic. If we shoot in the sand, it s making sandstorm.. etc
Chrono cross is my favorite game. I can say that not being able to summon is a skill issue. You have to charge your grid with your three characters up to 7th level, then defend with all of them, skipping your turn. This will cause you to tank a hit from all enemies, but you will get a whole 7 stamina worth of actions before another enemy action happens. I normally never use field spells, I use offensive spells to maximize damage. Say You want Yellow summon Golem. I leave the summoner on standby, then use yellow element on a character with 7 stamina, then yellow element on the other non summoner, and finally cast a final yellow element with the first caster. Then summon Golem with summoner who was waiting. This works every time, and you can even use it to wreck the final boss. It even works to help you cast the Chrono Cross element in the final fight. Still, I have been finishing chrono cross once a month for the past 17 years, so I am not exactly the best person to talk about the game's accessibility. So that's it. That's my rant.
Maybe it’s been done, but I think it would be cool if there was an rpg where you walk through a dungeon normally. But when you trigger a combat encounter, the area turns into a grid-based battlefield with terrain that varies depending on where you were when you encountered the enemy
Click this link sponsr.is/DesignDoc and use my code DESIGNDOC to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. That’s 25% your first month or your first year, depending on the subscription you choose.
Hey Design Doc. When you say Banjo Tooie has ridiculous scale when I thought the games size makes the interconnected world really impressive! Can you please elaborate on how bigger more varied worlds make collecting and backtracking problematic?
Where can I listen to your podcast? I keep coming across things with similar names, I can't find yours 😭
"Potential: Misogynist" is the single most insane phrase I've heard all day
"A dice roll may fail you, but a cliff will not" are powerful words to live by.
"Mario Species and Luigi" was really funny thing you slipped in there.
The Luigi is the rarest and most unique of species.
"I'm-a Luigi, number one!"
19:50 "With the power of misogyny, I have become unstoppable!"
From experiencing how Rivalry works in Pokemon, and with misogyny basically being that but in reverse, I just know they'll be punching the air every time a platoon comprised of only men rolls up.
_"No, my +25% damage! Now I'll only have _*_-25%_*_ damage this entire mission!"_
Misogyny as a buff/debuff is hilarious!
It serves as a debuff in this game. Alternatively, there are gay characters that gain a buff around other men.
Field effect: Patriarchy
@@lancelindlelee7256 Unlike in real life.
this is the first Design Doc video I'm watching after actually biting the bullet and starting to do gamedev part-time!
Congrats!
Sweet! Good luck!
I'm excited to see what you make!
Same!
Good luck!
True power is Yu-Gi-Oh season 1 when you can make up whatever rules you want on terrain bonuses
Moon logic was cited from that I believe. Still Its funny but like MetaZoo, it becomes arbitrary to discover or even play them. The turnabout or counterplay was important for the card game. Later field spells evoked that slight bonus. Still fun to witness it played. The type advantage like YGO Sacred Cards or Reshef of Destruction made it interesting. Although their downside was the card cost system. Either way that system was interesting and famous in Forbidden Memories.
“Now all your field zones are ocean, and you can only summon 1 land-based monster!”
Mako was playing There Can Be Only One before that card existed.
Nah, it’s pretty consistent
The power bonus granted by fields was mostly consistent, at least: a 30% boost to Attack and Defense to certain monster types if that terrain existed at all. The monster types affected even carried over to the physical game, though the boost was an addition rather than a multiplier. How the terrain changes... that can be another story.
YGO s1 stay goated lmao. Mammoth graveyard plus arrow = decayed Blue Eyes Ultimate
Every time I see your videos, I end up with a new list of game that I don't have time to try
I know Castform isn’t that good, but the buddy is my favorite Pokémon, and I love when they get a shout out at all.
Just happy to be there
I would like for it to get an evolution that also adapts to terrain.
@MandJTV that you?
It's such an interesting mon. Too bad it has pretty meh stats, and its forms don't change its stats around for some reason. Bulky Rain Castform, Hard hitting Sun Castform, and Fast Snow Castform should be a thing yesterday.
@@DigiBrad Haha nope, but it was a fun surprise to stumble across a Pokémon creator who also loved Castform!
Valkyria Chronicles: Cannot forget that one guy who goes "Who's a sexy tank" when beside one.
6:48 I think the system being haphazard works in it's favor. Different weather isn't just "buff one type nerf another". It's like yeah, fire type Pokémon would be weaker in the rain obviously. Of course fighting on a hailstorm would hurt, and some Pokémon are more ready for these scenarios than others.
I think it's a great lesson to not apporach mechanics like this as "Every type has its own advantageous weather", but moreso "outside factors affect the battle and some characters are more ready than others"
"...Or a Stealth Rock comes flying in from The Expanse." I see what you did there, beltalowda.
An unfortunate trait of Battle Network and its spiritual successor Star Force, is that a lot of its final bosses do not interact with the field at all, as they're just floating in the air. So if you've built your strategy around some sort of field combo, like grass panels and fire attacks, you're out of luck.
A lot of RPGs walk right into the exact same failing, unfortunately.
"Are you having fun with these super creative utility moves? Well, better scrap it and bring out a meta uunga buunga strategy quick, because the final boss(es) are huge dps checks that are completely immune to non-damaging moves!"
Hell, some games just skip the middle ground and make _all_ the bosses immune to non-damaging moves.
That seems like a band aid solution to me.
@@christiancinnabars1402 As much as I love the Dragon Quest series, it does suffer a lot from that
Hell, some final bosses _removes_ the field in their side, making _most_ chips useless for attacking. And they're often the _only_ bosses that does it, including postgame superbosses (which often floats, but at least the ground's there), so you got no prior warning that your deck is a shit brickhouse.
@@sponge1234ify at least by that point you can buy or drop a lot of useful stuff already, right? Right?
RE: Chrono Cross's field mechanic. A lot of people don't know you can cancel your attack and end a turn early, switching to another one of your party members. If you want to summon, you need to attack less and switch more, giving the enemies less chance to cast spells to screw it up. If you find yourself going into the negatives, that's why.
Yeah, I had to do that attack cancelling a LOT just to get this footage lol
@@DesignDoc I noticed, I just wanted to make sure the people in the rafters knew it wasn't editing. The moment I found out I could do that... Hoo boy.
Saw Megaman.exe and CAME RUNNING
Such a fascinating spin-off series, 3 and 6 were SO good
@@themoreno2600 I personally have a VERY soft spot for 5, because it's the first of the series I played, because it had a version for the DS
One of the best things Capcom has EVER made (and there's quite a few things on the list)
In Magical Starsign you had planets moving and if the stars aligned (literally) you'd deal more damage with the respectice element...I think, it's been like 15 years since i've played it
Omg Magical Starsign mentionned
There's also the fact that depending on whether your characters are in the front row or back row, their spells will change between single-target and AoE (with different spells having different kinds of AoE, from damage being split equally, to damage focusing the front row or hitting a random enemy a certain amount of times)
It's a really fun system
Omg memory unlocked, I’ve been looking for Magical Starsign! I got it at a swap meet when I was in middle school and lost it without ever learning the name. Thank you for solving that mystery I forgot about!
I love seeing so many of my favorite games all in one video. Megaman Battle Network, Steamworld Heist, Unicorn Overlord, Valkyria Chronicles... I feel so seen here.
Love the Valkyria Chronicles mention! Such a hidden gem of a series
Does anyone have any suggestions for similar games?
@@doogong Codename S.T.E.A.M. maybe?
2:44 idk why, but this whole sentence is just hilarious to me. I think it’s how you just tacked Luigi to the end
Pokemon and MMBN's robust competitive scenes makes them an excellent suggestion for any turn-based-combat aficionados to research, as they're basically status conditions and therefore are not that hard to implement. Good stuff as always!
The Disgaea series make terrain an integral part of how you tackle a map. Like everything else in the game it is meant to be thoroughly abused. Some map effect can be used to to effectively make your unit invincible while you chip away at monsters that you boosted to get more exp.
EBF5's weather are just like Pokémon's, but on steroids. Everyone gets a stack wet/chill/dry. Random chance of getting doomed (ticks down until it instantly kills you). Random chance of extra turn. Everyone gets a debuff protection. Huge debuff on defensive stats to everyone. Huge buff to offensive stats to everyone. There are SO many, and they're SO fun! Some bosses are extra tough to deal with because of weather, and having a summon to override it with a favorable one is how I beat most bosses on Epic difficulty.
Definitely my favorite "mix up" for JRPG battles
You should definitely do a video on card games. I say this because of my new favorite game, WildFrost, but I do think it would be interesting. You could go over how games with deck-building systems work or how games can make card game modes of themselves. Bloons TD Battles has a very unique card game mode that completely changes how you play the game. You could go over how pokemon made an actual card game... I think it could be fun
Mario and Rabids: Sparks of hope makes terrain interesting by letting you freely roam a certain area, even getting in bonus damage on some enemies if they are in range
Terrain effects are extremely fun to use. Fe for example the developers hiding one tile of tree or something can basically swing the game around in your favor and make a high dodge unit a dodge machine. Engage wise corrin and camilia being able to on base change the terrain is actually very cool for getting ready for a counter attack
Pokemon has some interesting terrain boosts. Each weather gives those nice bonuses to specific mons but it is a double edged sword sometimes like sunny day and rain dance as solar beam is faster but fire moves are stronger same with water moves being better but thunder always hits. It's pretty good design
Quoting Bismix: "This BUSH that I'm standing in also gives 10 AVOID"
Advance Wars making terrain stars which can make unit survive damage that normally destroy them, forrest, reefs (and more tiles in Days of Ruins) hiding units in Fog of War, litteraly make COs that change the weathers, a CO that have broken day to day passive of units running though harsh terrain easily like it's walking in the park, a CO based on terrains but get ignored because it's a strategy game instead RPG game : 🥲
I’ve had an idea for an RPG where fighting enemies underwater makes lightning spells target everyone, even yourself, and fire spells do nothing of course. Most of the enemies underwater are water-types that are weak to lightning so whether you’re willing to damage yourself just to kill them sooner is up to you(there’d also be ways to work around it, like lightning-resistant armor or reflection spells)
Small fire spells would do nothing, but in theory big enough fire spells should still do damage because hot water still hurts a ton. (And also underwater explosions are a thing)
Being wet helps channel electricity, and perhaps small bodies of water, but in big ones the electricity would disperse and it'd just tingle a bit. Unless, of course, the lightning spell is big enough.
Fire Emblem plays with terrain a lot too, since it's a turn based tactic JRPG.
Basically the games give you certain tiles that heal, damage or give specific buffs and debuffs to whoever might be standing on or near them, be it your units or the enemy ones.
FE10 has healing bushes that heal for 10% of a unit's HP if a unit stands on it, healing jars in an early map that heal 20% for up to four units surrounding it, etc., with bushes also granting avoid bonuses, making them essential spots to take control over. But some terrain ends up limiting the movement of your units, making them obstacles to reach an objective instead, despite the bonuses they may confer. Rafiel, for example, cannot traverse bushes when he's transformed, making his ability to make up to 4 units move twice in a turn mute if you transform him at the wrong time and place.
Depending on the game, flying units can bypass most obstacles that reduce or prevent movement, given the fact they fly above them, but at the same they will not enjoy the bonuses these tiles grant as a trade of (though it also means they will not suffer penalties or take damage for tiles that debuff or set your units aflame either). Similarly, units that attack with magic will not have their Hit rate affected if an enemy receives terrain bonus for avoid and defense, but they will still receive the bonuses if they are the ones standing on them.
Fire Emblem has always played with terrain that affects allies and foes alike, requiring the player to think about how they can remove the enemy unit from those points that grant them the advantage or lure the enemies into tiles that debuffs and/or damages them.
Reminds me of the good old days when FE was my favorite series.
Bahamut lagoon is an old Rpg from the last days of the SNES in 1996. Its various types of terrain that could do things like slow block movement, which is effected each squad has a dragon which can fly but isn't directly controlled, heal all units, do damage. You also, you, and your enemies can effect the terrain in various ways such as destroying walls with lightning to open up the map, setting a forest on fire, destroying bridge an enemy in on and dropping them into the void, curing poisonous swamp etc.
Larian Studios previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 had even more environment interaction. I can only refer to Electrified Cursed Blood Cloud. So metal.
Hehe love that game. Seems like things would always end in a giant field of fire.
Super Robot Wars has a lot of terrain that is mostly subtle but that plays into the mecha concept of the series. Terrain is in four categories: land, sky, water, and space, and each has their own unique mechanics. Land lets you get certain bonuses like increased defense or the ability to get healing or EN resupplied, but it also requires you take into account that it might impact mobility compared to flying, as you might normally expect. Water has a mechanic where it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of beam-type weaponry.
What's extra interesting about how Super Robot Wars does it is that each mecha, pilot, and weapon has their own terrain ratings (in a lot of games pilots don't have terrain ratings because most of them are unit-locked but in OG games most of the roster can swap between units so it makes sense for them to have ratings), where some perform better in different types of terrain. Some, like the Getter Robo, can switch their terrain specialty on the fly, some you might be able to specifically alter a loadout before a map (like games with Nadesico, the Aestivalis has 0G, Flight and Ground frames - that are mostly the same, except the Flight is more fragile than the 0G and Ground frames, and the 0G is only good in space or water terrain) and some you need option parts to use well.
It can get interesting in that when you have the options you might choose to do weird things when the tactics call for it. If there are a lot of enemies loaded out with beam weaponry, you may choose to dive your units under the water even if they have bad terrain ratings there, because it's a better defensive option. You might choose to give an option part for a unit with bad space performance even if it has a configuration to use in space if the ground-based variant is stronger (Scopedog). Sometimes there even are unique animations based on different terrain ratings like Dai-Guard being able to use its famous "rocket punch" if it uses Drill Arm while on the ground against an aerial enemy.
Terrain in Super Robot Wars is not huge as a gameplay mechanic - at most it's like a 10% modifier to accuracy or evasion (in a game with Spirit Commands) but it puts in a lot of work to really drive home the feel of mecha anime.
This is one of my favorite channels. I love learning more about games and some of this is even workable into my writing, book style writing. Keep up the great work!
finally for being the first video to show me wut Steamworld Heist is actually like to play cuz wow does that look appealing to me
the thumbnail makes it look like they're gonna fight and that's amusing to me for what a mismatch is, probably not in the direction a lot of people would expect it to be
I don't know if this counts but in The World Ends with you for the DS, you get to control both characters in 2 different screens, up screen with D-pad (or buttons) and bottom screen with the stylus. I really like that because you can make combos on the up screen that leads to a powerful duo attack.
Also there is an Interesting gimmick that the pins and clothes you use depends on what's the trend in that section, if is trend you get bonus stats, if not you don't. But if you fight enough Noises you can make everything you're using a trend and get those bonuses.
I honestly thought this was gonna be about coliseum/arena side modes in RPGs. This is much more interesting, and something I've considered before for my own ideas, but never been sure how to make it worthwhile and not an annoyance.
When I think of neat battlefields in RPGs, Dragon Ball Fusions is a game that instantly springs to mind. Hitting enemies hard enough makes them rocket across the field, and you enable follow-up attacks by hitting the enemy in the direction of a party member. You can also ricochet them off walls.
19:30 'Everyone is different. No two people are the same. Some people are about to be run over. Frankie has about five seconds.'
The 4th and 5th Wild Arms games did something similar to Paper Mario where each fight generates a random set of 7-8 hexagons that characters move between. Elemental magic is much weaker if you don't use it atop an elemental ley Hex. Buffs, ailments and debuffs only apply to that hex, so you can move off or onto it. Characters provide buffs to each other when they're together on the same hex, but that allows enemies to attack you both at once, and vice versa. Characters must also be on the same hex to use their combo attacks, and there are spells that specifically move allies or enemies around to different spots. This system had a lot of potential and I've always felt it could have been tapped into more with a 6th proper game.
Well, that's what Armed Fantasia's for. Hopefully.
Saw you big block of text and the world "arms" at the top and thought you just went on a whole rant about the arms race between governments
@@Volvagia1927 Armed Fantasia looks nice, but they are going with the more traditional battle system from the 1st 3 games.
Honestly I think that 5 was a "one step forward, two steps back" for the HEX system, because while did innovate in having different configurations of the battlefield, it also did less with the mechanic as a whole because of the way the party is handled. WA4 giving each character something unique that interacts with the mechanic (Jude being able to attack from 2 spaces, Raquel being able to move and attack in the same turn, Arnaud being able to jump to reposition multiple characters, and Yulie having the most interaction with the elemental HEXes) was more or less scrapped in favor of customizability and party members that are more defined by how their interactions work with direct RPG mechanics rather than the HEXes but I preferred 4's method.
@WhiteFangofWar 'Some people have rigged the enemy base with explosives. Albert has.'
I still regularly think "no two people are not on fire" whenever I play some sort of fire mage.
Seeing the Trails clip at the beginning actually sent me for a few seconds. I've been watching for years, and I think that was the first time I saw a Trails clip in one of your videos! I'd love for a video on world-building with Trails as the center piece, tho talking about the series without going into at least medium spoilers seems tough...
I saw the title, and immediately thought of BG3. My current run is taking an emphasis on the specific mechanics of the game, particularly surfaces. And oh man is Spike Growth nutty.
I had a mostly unintentional ice floor strategy by the end of the game. I summoned water myrmidons to spam healing mist for free heals on the party which left puddles, Gale was basically an ice wizard because of the gear I found, and most of my characters could either fly or teleport away from the dangerous terrain with no effort. Comedy would then ensue as bad guys fell down and lost their turns.
I really like the additional bonus we get from terain such as psychic terrain shuts down priority moves and boosts expanding force. Or electric terain keeps everyone awake and they can't fall asleep.
Tales of the Abyss had the "Field of Fonons" mechanic - casting multiple spells of the same element creates a glowing circle colored with that element, and then if a character stands in the field and uses a special move, the special move gets upgraded into a stronger elemental attack. And since it's a Tales game and characters are free to run around the battlefield, setting up that positioning actually takes some work and makes for interesting tactics.
I remember Disgaea having a very fun mechanic about changing the color of certain terrain to cause damage to enemies, or accidentally damage your own units with the same color change. I'd talk about it but haven't played Disgaea in so long I don't quite remember.
Xenoblade X had a boss enemy located in a cave. But the location of it is hovering over a pit of lava, and you can only stand on the pillars over the lava. It was a very difficult boss because the AI teammates keep falling into the lava. It was certainly a memorable fight.
Terrain damage reducer is funny, you can just wade in lava or *boiling white phosphorus* and be completely fine
Good thing you have a mecha....*cave*...... oh
16:41 one step from Eden does this exact same thing, on top of being a card slinger. One of my favorite games I’ve played recently 🥰
Oh yeah, Love me some One Step.
Agreed, just bought it yesterday and I'm hooked! ❤
This was neat.
I clicked into this expecting a discussion of aesthetics and immersion and instead learned interesting things about the mechanical aspects of settings.
Ground mechanics instantly make me think of Civilization. It's not an RPG, but it applies many core themes/mechanics that can come from certain. Different terrains have different outputs (Desserts and tundra produce less food, mountains are impassable, etc.). But it goes beyond those ideas, too. Some civilizations do better in "poor" environments than others, such as Canada in tundras or Mali in deserts.
However, the game takes the mechanics terrain further, integrating it into combat and movement. Cliffs, for instance, can be a strategic advantage, reducing movement unless you have levelled up units. Rivers not only impede movement but also weaken non-ranged attacks, adding a layer of strategy. On the other hand, hills slow movement but give an advantage to combatants atop them, and forests can be a tactical hindrance, slowing travel and impeding escapes/retreats.
Terrain even changes based on the environment and is not static. As climate change increases, low-laying land can flood and become un-usable, droughts and tornados can hit plains, volcanos can destroy buildings but supply nutrients for farming, and rivers can flood, causing harm to people and infrastructure but also allowing for enhanced crop yields and the ability to generate power through water mills and hydroelectric dams. If fruitful areas get nuked, they can become ruined by nuclear fallout.
Unicorn Overlord and MMBN in the same video I’m dreaming. Love their battle systems so much
The Battle Network series have a bit more with terrain, like the unbreakable Metal Panels that doubles the power of electric moves, Holy panels which halves all damage for someone standing on it, heck, even holes had their uses like several powerful chips using the nearest hole in front of Megaman as targets or the Snake chip which shoots out homing snakes out of holes on your field, famous for being the bullying tool of Gutsman who uses the Geddon chip, a chip that breaks every panel. There are also mechanics specifically used to mitigate the negative effects of terrain, the Floatshoes that disable most negative panels like the poisonous swamp panel or lava panel and the Airshoes which lets you walk on hole panels
Seeing Phantom Brave is neat. I was gonna mention it’s AoE magic and attacks and how they affects 3D areas of the map.
I absolutely love what Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth did with the combat arena, specifically IW, as it even makes your party members a hazardous part of the environment or a dangerous partner for a team up attack if close enough. Not to mention the ability to walk up to and pick up various objects in the environment to use as weapons. It all adds up to an incredibly engaging battle system that keeps even basic fights interesting.
Since I do this near every applicaple video...
The game idea I have would put monsters on the field like in Chrono Trigger, and starting an encounter would draw hexes on the field, since I wanted the game to have characters able to walk around, adding a tactical element in aiming attacks that CT didn't. There'd also be obstacles and verticals depending on where the fight's happening.
The Light and Shadow environmental mechanics found in Eternal Sonata are also a really interesting complication! Really fun impacts on gameplay and strategy.
this
Yakuza: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is one of the more engaging RPG battle arenas. Proximity Bonus, Back Attacks, Launchers, Team Attacks, Environmental Hazards, Street Weapons all make the RPG combat feel more tactical and "in the moment".
This reminds me to old game called Mines of Titan, a turn based RPG with futuristic theme. The battle field is different for each battle (well maybe except for final one) making each battle unique. What defines the field is where you encounter enemies which is random.
Another game worth mentioning is Disgaea. It looks like typical turn based RPG however most fields have colored tiles with certain perks. This could give advantage or disadvantage to player or enemy or even both. Player could remove these tiles by destroying respective colored pyramids but it has great side effect.
I've never seen a video so badly want to talk about Disgaea without having the confidence to talk about Disgaea. Impressive!
Been working in Pokemon Essentials and this channel is perfect to help me make my perfect Pokemon game!
I would like to mention of a hidden gem, Eternal Sonata. The game has the arena have light and dark areas, ex: under the sunshine or in the shades. These two areas affect the available movesets for team members and even the attributes of the enemies. I had so much fun even just the demo only!
When it comes to terrain mechanics, we gotta talk about one of the earliest in Live A Live. It was basically Square's first time doing something different with their RPGs and while simple it laid the foundation for all that came after, especially FF Tactics
An interesting one for me is yokai watch 3’s 3x3 grid based combat. Its a real time grid based combat system (similar to mega man battle network) where you can chain different yokai, have yokai in front to protect the weaker ones, there are different abilities that effect terrain and linked yokai, and when there are terrain hazards you have to be careful with the path you take when moving around your yokai. I’d really recommend it! It’s one of my favorite 3ds games.
When I saw the title, I thought you were going to talk about in-game arena/colosseum battles.
Very interesting video as usual but with two very important mechanics missing: positioning (especiallly in T-RPGs) and terrain changes (burning a forest, freezing a river, etc.)
You should do an episode on Dialogue Boxes.
I'm especially curious to see the differences such as where they appear on screen, whether they are accompanied by pictures/portraits, whether they are accompanied by names, what visual indicators they give to let you know you can push a button to end or go to the next part of the dialouge, how often you are given options vs you just are listening/reading, the overall size, how often there is animated text, how often you are able to speed through the text, how often is there audio of the dialogue in addition to the text, how often games mix audio dialogue with text only dialogue, etc...
As I work on my game, I was thinking of how to approach them. I looked at some other games. In Starfox 64, there is a character portrait for every dialouge. But for Paper Mario 64, there seems not only to be no portrait, but there is no name attached. In Hollow Knight, there are no portraits, but there are names for each dialogue. Same thing with Nanotale, although Nanotale's appears on the bottom and Hollow Knights appears on the top I think. I imagine that games like Paper Mario don't show names/portraits because they'd rather just show the character on screen and showing both is redundant, which means less room for text or the text would then have to be smaller. By getting rid of the portrait, they can make room for more text or bigger text. In games like Starfox, you essentially NEVER actually see the characters; you only see the ships, and even then, you barely see your NPC's ships. Therefore, I think it was important for them to show the characters in the dialogue boxes, as it's pretty much the only way you get to see/know the characters.
That potential mechanic in Valkyria Chronicles sounds cool. I really like seeing little stuff like bonuses and technical playing into characters personalities in videogames, like how some characters in Samurai Showdown have different reactions to killing attacks like horror, remorse, or moving on. Makes me think of Disgaea 4's Legendary Tree giving units buffs based on relationships they made.
battle network is legit the coolest battle system ive ever fucking seen. absolutely genius design
Love your videos. I use them to help spice up my ttrpg.
Shining Force II land effect--depending on a character's class, it can hinder movement a certain amount, but it can also bolster defense. Works for both your party members as well as enemies. LOTS of strategizing (made more challenging because the system that determines turn order is so opaque that it's almost impossible to figure out, oops)
it was about 90% of the way there, so i am almost surprised it wasnt formatted as a sliding scale: from earthbound to disgaea and beyond. From "minimal" effort into where the fights take place (a featureless void), all the way up to the exact genre of games where the level design is synonyms with the gameplay and every tile of terrain has a different effect on battle, from the terrain coverage of fire emblem, to the throwing limitations and geo effects of disgaea. It is there in the footage and subtext, but grid based terrain is limited to megaman battle network which handles the grid system so uniquely that it doesnt quite compare to anything else, and unicorn overlord, which trashes the grid in its entirety.
project x zone 2 has some unique terrain properties, one place you visit early on has a poison swamp that will deal damage to both friendly and enemy units (unless they can fly(but that’s enemy units only)), others have certain hazards or healing spots that will heal both friendly and enemy units. the level’s geometry also has an effect on how a unit can move (cause it’s grid based movement), one map may just be a flat space, while another could have various obstacles that need to be destroyed, or different levels of elevation
In MistWalkers The Last Story a key mechanic is the ability to leave magic Puddles all over the Battle field terrain which can damage or debuff your opponent , or your self if the puddles were left behind by your opponent . You could also sacrifice your terrain advantage to have your party leader splash them through the entire battlefield through Elemental Diffusion.
"...full of koopas and toads and all KINDS of Mario speciesandLuigi."
I died. What even ARE the Marios?
0:32 Trails in the Sky my beloved!
Seriously though, I actually really like how the Trails series handles combat. Whenever you run into an enemy on the overworld, the game shifts to a battlefield where characters, both Allies and Enemies can move around, like a tactical RPG. Positioning matters, spells and abilities often have specific kinds of AOE affects, so you want to pay attention to where your characters are positioned. Group them together so you can cast some powerful buffs, but they might be vulnerable to a boss's powerful AOE attacks.
It also means you need to pay attention to what your characters are good at. Mages are more fragile, so you want them to be away from danger, but then they might not benefit from getting speed or damage buffs. You can give mages a higher defense, at the cost of casting weaker spells, or spells costing more energy. Or, you can load up on power and cast speed boosting items and nuke the entire battlefield before the enemy can kill you. Or, you can give the high damage character evasion boosting equipment so that they can run into the center of an enemy formation and counter-attack them into oblivion.
I really prefer this style to the traditional style where everyone stands in a line and takes turns hitting each other, there's a lot more tactical consideration and it really lends towards building characters who fill a specific niche.
The title had me thinking that this was going to cover gladiatorial sequences in RPGs such as fighting in the arena in Final Fantasy VII's Golden Saucer. That might make for a good video as well.
It might not be a blown out RPG, but League of Legends feature bushes where you can hide, 6 different dragon effects that take place to modify the map mid game, and also boosts to your team if you manage to beat some epic monsters. Some champions also benefit from having terrain close, like pushing and stunning an opponent against the wall or jumping over a wall to hide and escape (or attack and ambush).
Warframe is a pretty good example of how terrain can be used in a shooter. Because it was originally designed as a stealth game, there are a lot of places that you can go duck into cover in or traverse the map unseen. Because you interact with the environments difference from how your enemies do, you can get rather clever with your movements early in the game. For example, you can use a water jet from a broken pipe to give yourself a quick elevation boost wow your enemies might have to take the stairs or ride underneath a zipline
I like the terrain mechanics of Fossil Fighters (at least the first 2 games).
In 1, the RPG combat splits the grid into 4 zones per team: 1 attack zone (AZ), 2 support zones (SZ), and 1 escape zone (EZ). You start battle with a max of 3 dinosaurs on the AZ and SZ. Dinosaurs in the AZ can attack enemy dinosaurs in both the AZ and SZ. Dinosaurs in the SZ can only attack the enemy dinosaur in the AZ, and they have an Attack debuff in that zone (unless it is a long-ranged dinosaur, then the above is ignored). SZ also gives a Def buff and unlocks a SZ dinosaur’s support abilities; these abilities gives buffs and debuffs to the dinosaurs on the AZ on either team, so having good support dinosaurs can help your AZ dinosaurs destroy the battlefield. Lastly, you can move your AZ dinosaur to the EZ, where they are out of range of all attacks and can recover from status effects; however, in doing so, an SZ dinosaur has to move to the AZ, and the EZ dinosaur is stuck there for 3 turns, before being booted out to the SZ. Moving your dinosaurs can help you when the AZ has a bad type matchup or low on health, but it can cause problems to your team setup as it takes around 6 turns to reorient your teams back into position.
In Champions (2), the mechanics have changed. Each team now has 6 spots on the grid, shaped as two rings. 3 AZ spots on the front, 3 SZ spots on the back, and no EZ. The grid itself orients everything into 8 columns (4 per team), and the damage advantage is now determine by how far away from each column you are. Close-range dinosaurs deal the most damage at 1 column away, mid-range deal most at 4 columns away, and long-range deal most at 7 columns away. You have 3 dinosaurs, but they’re separated by one spot on the wheel, and you can turn the wheel to orient your dinosaurs to specific spots: one AZ and two SZ (both SZ add their buffs/debuffs together), or two AZ and one SZ (the buffs/debuffs are split in half for both AZs). Managing your positioning and distance becomes critical for this game.
Now, Frontiers (3) is where they fucked everything up. The TLDR is that you no longer have control of all 3 dinosaurs, just your main one, and the other two are determined by party members. The grid is now 2x3 squares, your team on the left, enemies on the right, the fastest dinosaurs on the top and the slowest at the bottom. Speed also determines turn order. The dinosaurs can only attack dinosaurs ahead of them or on diagonal spots. You’d think that means the middle is the best spot, but most encounters are against 1-2 enemies only so the top dinosaur has the best range AND attacks fastest. If you have a dinosaur that’s stronger but slower than your teammates, then you will always go last on the battle order, and your range is limited to basically just the middle dinosaur, if there even is one. And because your “team” share the same pool of points (required for moves), the AI will eat up all the points doing their moves before you ever get a chance to attack, and might be forced to skip your turn. There’s no way to move your position, you can just be stuck in an automated battle where you cant do anything until the battle is either over or a teammate loses all its health and frees up a spot to move upwards. Frontiers is very bad, and not just for this.
FOSSIL FIGHTERS MENTION
Pokémon Reborn, Rejuvination, and Desolation are worth mentioning for their field effects having around 40 or so environments or so based on where you're battling. So like if youre fighting in a cave sound based moves will get a huge power boost from echoing and if you use earthquake a couple times there might be a cave in damaging both sides. Or like you can fight underwater and like fire type moves wont work at all and non water types take damage every turn, but then you can use dive to go back to the waters surface field but then like you can use sludge wave a couple times and turn it to mukwater where now poison moves are stronger and grounded pokemon are taking damage and then use blizzard to freeze over the water and now ice type noves are stronger and like all priority moves raise your speed as your gaining momentum from skating on the ice. Like, this is such a good system and adds so much depth and variety to pokemon. theres even some overworld puzzles that require you to change the terrain in battle to progress. Like, it's really really neat and interesting
So glad SteamWorld Heist was in here because SteamWorld Heist II has honestly become one of my new favorite indie games ever up there with Bug Fables and Hades II
Heist II expanded on the iconic ricochet mechanic (as well as countless other features that made the game great) to perfection, so I highly recommend checking it out
pokemon cinquest has really nice terrain mechanics
Thinking about FFT Terrain
Not for the movement effects or geomancer attacks but bc of Arithmeticians interaction with height
One extra point for Chrono Cross' element system: The melee attacks of characters deal damage of their innate type: An entirely black field will drop Serge's attack to 33%, and an entirely white field will raise it to 175%
Not mentioned by name but I saw some Phantom Brave footage in here, let's gooo.
Megaman battle network mention! ❤🎉
@DesignDoc can you do a video on fighting main characters in rpgs, such as the friends boss battle in Omori or the contestant battles in Fear and Hunger 2?
With JRPGs, I usually base my team around "who is most in need of the exp?" Are some characters in my party way lower level than the others? Is there an optional fight somewhere I can only use certain characters with and not have a full party for story reasons and thus need to make sure those specific characters can hold their own? Is there a character whose usefulness simply doesn't come through until a much later level than everyone else and thus need to grind? Is there a big fight coming up and I need to make sure everyone's special meter is fully charged?
I only break that if the boss fight is so tough that I really do need the strategic edge of specific characters. Environments tend to not factor in very much. Though I do remember a specific fight in Legend of Dragoon where there's a giant Snake in a cave. You just barely have enough characters to have a full party at this point in the game, 2 melee fighters and an ranged fighter. The melee do a lot of damage but their magic attack is not great- and the attack items' power is based on magic attack of the turn character. The ranged fighter barely does any damage with her bow but has the highest magic attack in the game. The fight with the giant snake starts off simple enough, like any other boss fight, but then like halfway through it goes though a tunnel and is way up in the air where the melee fighters can't reach it. The ranged fighter can still chip away it it with their abysmal damage each turn, but the melee fighters are stuck either just guarding, healing, or using consumable attack items well below their full power. Sure, the ranged fighter can just use the attack items to their full power, but then you sacrifice the only chance to deal damage for free and instead blow through your consumable a lot faster. And in another fight, there's a boss who sets up a respawning barrier that you have to break before you can damage him- but the game never tells you that, you just try to attack him, realize no damage was dealt, and then realize the barely visible barrier that wasn't there two turns ago is a selectable target.
Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 had some interesting terrain mechanics. In water you would move less spaces, differences in height were actually important since your characters could only jump a set number of spaces. Archers in higher terrain would deal a lot of damage to the units down below. Terrain could obstruct your attacks (for example throwing weapons). There was even a class that could use the battle's terrain to produce different effects, the Geomancer.
I'm really surprised that you didn't talk about it. For a game of that era it had very interesting mechanics. I think it deserved a place.
FFT did this pretty well. I can't wait for the remaster...
i clicked on this video KNOWING you were gonna talk about ttyd because its so unique and charming that adds extra flair and intrigue to the already great base battle system.
small edit: I forgot to even mention the whole glitz pit chapter and how much it plays into the whole thing being a performance. its lovely. especially with the unique conditions to make things more interesting
Honestly, I think FF13 deserves more credit- (responding to the comment about "knowing the solution and just doing it again and again.") Each chapter making you use different party members means it can present different challenges each chapter- and within that chapter, you're going to be swapping paradigms out for a lot of battles, especially when you encounter enemies that force you to question your current strategies. (The ranking system also encourages players to try and excel in battle rather than do the bare minimum too- if you get a low star ranking after a fight, it might push you to ask yourself what you're doing wrong, prompting you to rethink your strategy.)
I think FF13-2 is more problematic when it comes to doing the same thing over and over again. 13 is a genuinely difficult game, and that forces you to REALLY think about your options and plan ahead for each battle- an average enemy can feel like a boss fight.
But in FF13-2, everything feels like it's made of paper. You can just buff yourself and spam ruinga without thinking. The ranking system is far less refined too, and can either feel unfair in poorly ranking you, or too generous, without the player having any real takeaway from it. Still fun and snappy of course, but it fits that feeling of "Just blow things up, you already know what to do."
The way Chrono Trigger handles encounters is quite refreshing, since it's structured like a classic JRPG, but instead of warping you to a nebulous arena, the fights take place in the area you're exploring. I think the only game to do this in recent years (and to my knowledge) is "I am Setsuna".
This is like the 3rd video where I see Unicorn Overlord highlighted here in the channel. Is this my signal to purchase it...?
Well, I like Panzer Dragoon Saga's battle screen a lot. To the point that it's the game that's made me seriously consider RPGs as a genre- I played it a few weeks ago, and it's the first, and only, RPG I've really gotten into, and it's because of said battle screen. It's a realtime battle system, with four quadrants arranged in a circle that you can move between. Enemies are in the center, and can also move around you, effectively moving you into another quadrant. Enemies also have firing arcs, and some sides of some enemies have a weak point.
This combines together to make a very engaging battle system, which is halfway between a classic turn-based non-spacial RPG and a more modern action RPG. It's brilliant, and every time it starts to get stale, they add a new wrinkle to it, like enemies where it makes sense to wait for them to move, arenas where one quadrant is blocked off, or enemies with weak points that only briefly open up inside of an enemy's best firing arc, forcing the player to expose themselves to do the most damage.
Bro left Disgaea out for engagement 😂
- nice video (:
World in Conflict, a realy good strategy game developed by Massive Entertainment, uses terrain to affect your units line of sight. like most strategy games enemy units won't show on your minimap until your units have line-of-sight on them. In Wic units vision can be blocked by terrain features, like buildings, hills, forests etc, creating excellent opportunity for abushes. In fact the infantry role in WiC multiplayer is almost entirally build around taking advantage of how unit vision works.
I swear, you upload exactly what i was needing to do for my games at the perfect times. Do you have cameras on me or something?
Also, another thing to add about Steamworld haste, is that the game allows headshots and even damaging the legs to reduce enemy mobility. So it's trickshot system is even more emphasized by rewarding shots from below or above.
With regards to pokemon's terrain effects, there's a great fangame, "Pokemon Reborn", that adds a ton of depth to them, and tons of new ones on top of that! The effects are very in depth and powerful, with nearly every major might being designed to take advantage of one of them. You can use them to your advantage as well, or even change the field effect entirely! Using dive on water's surface will bring the battle underwater. Using heat wave or the likes on grassy terrain will turn it into burning field, which you can put out with rain, sandstorm, or a variety of wind moves, completely removing any field from play. And you can temporarily overwrite the field by having a porygon use conversion and conversion 2 back to back, creating glitch field, which is a wacky fusion of modern and gen 1 mechanics. This only really scratches the surface, so if you're looking for ideas on interesting terrain effects, I highly recommend checking it out!
Thank you for supporting my RPG 🙏
For me it s into the breach. The ennemi and our actions can damage things we dont want. And it s prêts dynamic. If we shoot in the sand, it s making sandstorm.. etc
I'm 1 year into developing my first game. Almost done with the main story! I'm still working on mechanics to make combat more fun and less repetitive.
Chrono cross is my favorite game. I can say that not being able to summon is a skill issue. You have to charge your grid with your three characters up to 7th level, then defend with all of them, skipping your turn. This will cause you to tank a hit from all enemies, but you will get a whole 7 stamina worth of actions before another enemy action happens. I normally never use field spells, I use offensive spells to maximize damage. Say You want Yellow summon Golem. I leave the summoner on standby, then use yellow element on a character with 7 stamina, then yellow element on the other non summoner, and finally cast a final yellow element with the first caster. Then summon Golem with summoner who was waiting. This works every time, and you can even use it to wreck the final boss. It even works to help you cast the Chrono Cross element in the final fight. Still, I have been finishing chrono cross once a month for the past 17 years, so I am not exactly the best person to talk about the game's accessibility. So that's it. That's my rant.
Maybe it’s been done, but I think it would be cool if there was an rpg where you walk through a dungeon normally. But when you trigger a combat encounter, the area turns into a grid-based battlefield with terrain that varies depending on where you were when you encountered the enemy