I was gonna ask the same thing about Valkyria Chronicles. Ive been playing that one too, its the one that got me truly interested in playing these types of games.
I dont know how to explain it but VC was very simple for me to pick up and start playing. To figure out what shit does and what Im suppose be doing. When I tried to play Tactics Ogre: LUCT, I could not grasp any of it so I just stopped playing it. I guess it just seemed to me that it was geared toward hard core TRPG players. A couple months later I tried out Disgaea 3 and I feel pretty much teh same about this game as VC.
Is there a difference between Strategy Role Playing Games and Tactical Roll Playing Games?
From my very limited knowledge, TRPGs can be considered SRPGs, but SRPGs can never be considered TRPGs based on the fact that they are both extremely strategy oriented.
SRPGs are more along the lines of Civilztion and the like.
That doesn’t mean a TRPG can’t have SRPG characteristics and vice versa. The terms are nearly interchangeable, but the biggest difference is that TRPGs are turn based and on a chesslike grid in most cases.
Basically speculation on my part, If I’m incorrect anyone is free to correct me.
Strategy RPGs are just Strategy Games with RPG characteristics. Ogre Battle is an SRPG, as is Final Fantasy Tactics, as are many small-scale squad games where you control a small group of persistent customizable units (like the campaign mode of Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II) and many tower defense games that include RPG elements like Dungeon Defenders or Sanctum.
Tactical RPGs are a subset of SRPG that generally involve turn-based combat between small squads of individually-controlled units (instead of sending armies/squads with general orders at other armies/squads with similar commands and letting the AI sort it out.). Usually have some measurable metric for movement and generally involve ordered turns and allowing large amounts of customization on the members of your team. The genre has it’s roots in American PC gaming (It’s beginnings can be traced back to the combat systems of many early PCRPGs like Ultima III and the Gold Box-era D&D titles) but probably the most common examples these days are the many, many Japanese SRPGs out there, with Fire Emblem being one of the first games released in the genre in the form we recognize it now back at the start of the 90’s.
(Civilization is just a strategy game- it lacks just about anything that could be considered an role playing element)
Very succinctly put. You broke it down a farther level than I could articulate. Kudos.
I see. It’s funny because I think I may incorrectly associate strategy games with RPGs because of the fact I think more about just pre-modern warfare (games with medieval themes, swords or whatever) as typical RPG fare. Maybe I’ve unnecessarily boondoggled the terms in my head.
Sigh Now I feel like my dad, the guy who claims Zelda is an RPG despite the obvious fact that it’s an action/adventure game and that there is no leveling system.
One day I need to argue with him on the basis of comparison with the first Dragon Quest game, since we both know that game and it’s mechanics very well.
Maybe he thinks Zelda is an action RPG? I doubt he knows the differences between RPG sub-genres though.
There really isn’t much strategy emphasis, considering that you do not know the lay of the land, or anything about the opposition forces, prior to entering each of the battles.
Ergo it is pure tactics - you take your team into the fray, and make it work, adapting to unique circumstances each time in order to win
It is mad fun, and only hindered, imo, by having too small of a party size limit.
FFT is my absolute favorite I played even hacks to make the game be 5times more hard and with some new clasess. I used the lvl down trap to some extent. I Love Agrias she is my main waifu. I was addicted
I like Front Mission 2 it was really cool for snes
I played disgaea but didn’t grind just did the final once, also from nippon ichi Phantom Brave really clever system but falls in the same category of crazy grinding, Makai kingdom liked it less then PB but it falls on the same grinding shit
Never played fire emblem, played just a little of tactics ogre, hated FFTA, Stella Deus you got some generic characters just to be easily outclassed by the story lines ones it was fun in the beggining
Eternal poison is stupid you play each level once, you can’t grind and I got at a point of the game that I had to delete my save because I didn’t invest in the skills that could kill the boss so if you don’t play the way they want you’re screwed
Jeanne D’Arc and Stella Deus are in the list I provided.
TheBladeItself said: ↑
[INDENT=1]Ergo it is pure tactics - you take your team into the fray, and make it work, adapting to unique circumstances each time in order to win It is mad fun, and only hindered, imo, by having too small of a party size limit.
[/INDENT]
Yeah, I saw a video somewhere that said in OgreTactics you can have up to 12 people or so.
Also, on Fire Emblem, most of their games are on handhelds, so I think that’s why it just less notoriety than it deserves.
Fire Emblem’s big issue is that it kinda slunk out here. It didn’t get almost any hype or buzz when FE7 came out into the states, and the Gamecube titles in particular almost feel like Nintendo snuck them out the back door while nobody was looking- likely because of how archaic the presentation of the games were compared to most console titles. The 3DS installment, hopefully, will have Nintendo of America finally giving their foreign bastard son some love and support, especially if Pokemon Tactics isn’t DOA.
To be honest, though, it’s really a different beast then even most of the TRPGs we’ve gotten used to. It’s closest brother is Shining Force, who hadn’t been seen at all in five or six years by the time we got our first Fire Emblem (and hadn’t been seen in an actual, complete game in ten.) Little character customization, random number whimsy, permadeath (those last two together? Kinda a dick move)… I can understand why it’s a hard sell.
Indeed. But I finally got to play through all 3 scenarios in english on an emulator a while back. Fans went and put english text in scenarios 2 and 3. A bit of a hassle to get it all set up and working but it was worth it.
Yeah, I’m surprised Advance Wars hasn’t been discussed much here. I haven’t played Days of Ruin, though I hear it’s good aside from the odd changes to how CO’s work.
I should probably get around to playing Let Us Cling Together. I played the original TO in the way-back, but I had enjoyed Ogre Battle/64 and FFT a lot more, and I don’t remember completing it. I do remember that archers were absolutely nuts tho.
I’ve got a couple games in the genre that kinda got resigned to that fate, I suppose. I’ve got the Growlancer games for PS2 and Shining Force 1/2 via Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection to go through still, and I don’t think I ever got around to finishing Makai Kingdom either (although after Disgaea/2 and La Pucelle, I kinda suffered from NIS grindfest burnout. Also, fuck La Pucelle.
I was leafing through the PSP’s library the other day while seeing what’d been made backwards comparable with the Vita and was surprised just how prolific the genre was on it. Not all of it seems to be top-shelf stuff but it seems like I’ll never be starved for new stuff to try in the genre should I seek it, especially when the PS1 classics go live on the Vita as well.
Fire Emblem broke out around the time FE7 hit the states, but it was still immensively popular in Japan. FE6 was never released outside Japan, but it’s arguably more better (and harder) than FE7. Fire Emblem 1-3 were pretty straightforward games, but 4 and 5 were probably the hardest of them all (the RNG really fucks you over in Thracia). One reason why Fire Emblem hasn’t been as good in recent years is because of map save points they decided to incorporate in the series. The game is suppose to punish the player by the removal of units that never return should they die, but the save points can be used to manipulate several scenerios/statistics/etc. For example, in FE Shadow Dragon I had a units that capped everything but resistance even though certain ones growths were poor. This was because I used different combinations when approaching enemies, and when my unit leveled up I would save the “best” level up. There were two save points on each map, so by the end of the game characters were buffed out because I spent the time to manipulate the RNG.
Personally though, I think Advance Wars is a more strategic game than Fire Emblem. In order to get the highest rankings in AW, you have to be good at capturing maps and unit spacing. You can easily lose the advantage in Advance Wars when faced with powerful CO powers, or loss of important units.
