Neither of these are particularly much like DQ8.

Probably because the gamers keep asking for sequels without thinking about whether a sequel is really necessary, or considering that the original devs probably don't even care about the series anymore?

Or because Square pretty much can't do anything but pander to their fans anymore because that's exactly what their fans want them to do, and said fans will still buy every single thing they release even if it does suck?

(It's also not like SD2 and 3 had really amazing characters or stories or balance or hit detection or...

Well, except that SD2 actually did have a pretty good story that used EVIL EMPIRE as a backdrop to something more, I don't know, sinister, whereas SD3 pretty much just had an evil empire and stopped there.)

Also true. Well, maybe not so much balance, but some classes were just sort of boring. Or unbalanced in an unfun way.

(New reply since I feel like bumping this).

Not terribly far in DQM2 since I somehow forgot I had it. Have been playin DQ7 more though!

So I got to the part with the Deja Tribe where



Oh, what else.



So yeah, though, the separate plot threads are coming together and I'm really digging how it's turning out. I like how none of the individual story arcs have any real immediate closure, and you're sort of just left hanging for a few more hours, and when you DO get closure, it's mostly for your party members, and never for the secondary characters involved because they're dead by that point.

So yes, it's a lot less cute and happy than I first expected but then again, DW4 apparently has a poisonous mine full of dead children so I really shouldn't be expecting "happy" here.

(Maribel is a ****ing bitch. And not in a good way like Jessica).

I didn't really like SD3's class system, at least partially for the reason Raze said. And also partially because whatever (ranger, I think. light path) I took for hawk's first class change never got me anything remotely useful. the other classes seem alright so I'm going to focus more on the first point.

As Raze also said, SD3's more rigid class system DOES do a nice job of keeping characters unique, or rather not letting you master everything. However, this introduces a new problem in that, in, say, FFV, you can pretty much be getting new skills relatively constantly, whereas in SD3 you're going to be getting a large amount of new skills a few levels after the class change and then nothing for awhile. It's sort of a stagnation problem.

Anyway, the abundance of skills tends to cause an over-reliance on them. The fact that every time you use one, it effectively pauses the game doesn't help. So it ends up being less of an action RPG and more of... I don't know, it's just a lot less actiony and a lot more "stand around and pick things from a menu" which is sort of what action RPGs are supposed to avoid. Likewise, it's even more problematic when enemies use magic, because it, again, pauses stuff, and you can't really avoid it, so combat is basically throwing a bunch of spells and weapon-based skills between the two parties with very little reliance on actually... action or physical dexterity or whatever else typically gets associated with action RPGs.

I guess I can say that it sort of feels like how FFXII felt to me -- like Chrono Trigger, only done really sloppily.

(I could also maybe draw another comparison to Arc the Lad, which I sort of think of as Chrono Trigger with a proper in-battle movement system, but I don't think I will).

And, after all, the FF problem with class changes ruining uniqueness of characters is more because the entire series is just massively unbalanced in millions of ways.

But anyway, some other games that end up feeling much more like SD2 than SD3 did for me:

Summoner 2 - Which still has a lot of menu based skills and no real class change system, but you DO get to level up various skill groups, and your characters never get un-unique (and actually play differently when manually controlled). It also remains pretty actiony throughout. Quite lovely.

Zelda: The Twilight Princess, oddly enough. I can't really say why and none of the other Zelda's do for me, really, but this just sort of does.

Illusion of Gaia, quite a bit, although it's less RPGish, and you've not a party. I really like this entire series a lot, actually, but IoG feels the Seikenishest.

Crystalis on the NES is also pretty similar, I believe, to what the original prototype for SD2 was supposed to be like, but again, sans party.

Other than being real time, it doesn't play like Secret of Mana much.

Persona, dawg. People ACT nice. That doesn't mean they ARE nice.

That and it's not like the main is giving anyone a reason to bully him.

That and if you're in a Secret Society of People That Can Shoot Themselves to Summon Demons you REALLY don't want to be pissing eachother off for several reasons that I hope should be obvious.

Also, and this is going to sound crazy, and I can only really explain it in terms of some rather obscure British PC games that I doubt anyone here has really played, but sometimes occaisional stupid decisions from the AI can make the AI characters endearing.

Remember the whole 'too much customization is a bad thing' thing?

Persona 3 strikes a middle ground. You get a bunch of characters you can't customize, and one you can do whatever you want to. I like how it works out!

I'm also pretty sure the AI in Persona 3 'learns.' I've occaisionally seen, say, Junpei use an attack a certain shadow is immune to, but he literally says "Oh crap!" and never does it again and, for that matter, if you've analyzed the enemy, they'll start exploiting their weaknesses right off the bat.

Actually, are you guys using the analyze command? I'm starting to wonder if that plays a potentially large role in how the party members act. And why, say, some people find the AI ineffective and others are finding it very smart.



And the manual, doesn't it? Or at the least main character personas evolving was in Persona 2 so yeah.



Which is the concept that I'm PRETTY SURE Jung's persona theories were based on anyway.

Yeah.

Holy ****, a concept RPG. I mean, I think that at the least, you have to respect that the gameplay elements actually relate back to the story and everything, on a more meaningful level than RIP AND TEAR. YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS.

I like having to talk to characters to equip them and check their status. It forces you to interact with them, which achieves some sort of counter-disenfranchisement of the unit type thingy.

Yeah, Wizardry 8's the same... overall setting as setting. Different planet, but same story arc. And pretty fleshed out, too.

Games where you could really rape people with status effects were like, Wizardry 8, though ;) Sleep and blind also hurt defense a lot.

And you had potions of summon fire elemental.

Relatively useless attack items is a bit of a problem with the SMT games of late, actually.

Anyway, since you mentioned action/rpgs, the status effects in legend of mana can actually be immsensely useful on the hard modes. enemies have a lot of hp and can kill you pretty fast, so either tempering status attacks into your weapons or using synchros is quite useful. they don't really help as much on bosses, but regular battles can actually wipe you out, so yeah.

anyway, I'm also pretty sure status attacks could work in chrono cross. that series has a lot of really neat subtleties with the skill system that I didn't really pick up on the first time, and I'm also not in the mood to elaborate now but I might sometime (Very short version: CC lacking MP changes the focus from resource managment to resource allocation and in-battle strategy, and CT's combo system is far more intricate than I ever realized).

Anyway, I've started playing Soulblazer recently. Unless it starts crapping out massively, I might start adding that to the "underrated list." Filling int he town is *really, really cool,* and I like how you have a little hovering bit that shoots fireballs. And that it feels like a Genesis game. So yeah, maybe underrated

Which is how I feel about Illusion of Gaia too, sort of. This is another game I'm not really far in, but I think the action is really nice and fast, I like the character switching, I like how surreal it is, I don't like the translation sucking (BAD BAD BAD), and I think the dungeon designs are pretty neat. And stuff like the Incan Gold Ship, the pig... and just various little things that do sort of get under your skin and == brainfuck!

Also wanna play more of Ys III sometime to see how I feel about it.

"The challenge of RPGs is not strategy, it is resource and risk management."

Resource management and risk management are strategy.

Anyway, this is where also some of the stupid problems crop up. For instance, have you ever noticed that stat buffers and status attacks are pretty much useless in any console RPG thta's not a recent Shin Megami Tensei or Dragon Warrior game? If the chance of failure is always 100%, then risk management is sort of diminished since you have no real reason to be taking that risk in the first place.

I kind of feel that DemiKids is underrated.

Further babbling about Chrono Trigger, then. I think there are some games you have to be good at to beat, and some games you can still beat even if you suck at them -- either because they're easy, or because you can overcome any obstacle with enough gruntwork (levelling, pattern memorization, etc).

I think some easy games can be fun, not in a mindless fun sense, but in the sense that you can still fly around the screen and do all this crazy, awesome stuff and it's bright and colorful and whatever. And I think some easy games are boring if you're just hammering the attack button.

And I think there are some games that you can beat, relatively easily, without being good at them, but they're only fun to play if you ARE good at them.

This is analogous to, say, willing suspension of disbelief, but I'm not really sure exactly what I'm saying or how it relates.

Or in other words, is Hugh REALLY useless in Phantasy Star 2, or is he only useless because people aren't willing to use him?

(Additionally, this is why battle systems with, say, only three, or even a single, character aren't necessarily less strategic. It's not about the number of actions or characters you get. It's about using the number of actions/characters you have effectively. If you have twenty characters that aren't that unique, you don't really have to think. If you have a single character up against a tough boss, you really have to make your single action count. Except that's not the only area where it matters. I mean, you also have to weigh costs and benefits of the actions you can do, so yeah, if you have one character and there's only a single action that ever makes sense, then not, it's not strategic there, either).

I really liked FFX's battle system. Sphere grid not as much, but I didn't think it was bad, really, just unrefined. But yeah, I'd say FFX's battle system is pretty much the best in thta series, where as I think the earlier games with ATB... don't really use it and it just makes things take to long, FFVI-IX I thought did alright with it, and XII sort of felt to me like some bastardized CT meets Diablo thing.

Basically though, CTB is sort of a precursor/variation on the press-turn idea we see in the recent SMT games, which is neat. There are actually a few other games that have used it first and are much closer to CTB but I can't remember them. I know USaga used it, and I think a few PC RPGs did, and I'm almost positive Grandia and Xenogear's systems were both similar. Chrono Cross' stamina points weren't *too* far off, although they were more of a genuinely turn-based variation on ATB (and a little closer to what Septerra Core did, except... not as... slow.)

Anyway, I don't know if any DQ games ever implemented this. It DOES seem that certain spells tend to get used quicker. As a whole, though, stats and status effects seem really important in this series, so I think it could prove an interesting addition in future installments to see how the two concepts work together.

I'll throw a suggestion out for the PC/Amiga classic albion, though. Not EXACTLY DQ8 like, but give it a shot and you might see why I think it'll appeal to that crowd.

Wizardry 8's not necessarily a bad idea either, and has a lot of, er, similarities in design philosophy. although 1-7 aren't really as similar, and neither is Forsaken Land on the PS2.

---edit---

After playing DQ6 for a bit, it seems really slow.

Okay, so apparently there WAS equippable armor. My other point was that I didn't find the game particularly memorable, so yeah.