Favourite RPG

Yeah, this isn't a proper vote or anything that we can all take a personal take on the genre, I only went for the family tree of JRPG's as that's where the post from Balla came from about JRPG's, not RPG's in general.

Balladeer wrote:

The 'phone in Silver was a pain in the backside.  There's a reason why Joey and his Rattata calls became a meme.

Everyone's allowed to define RPGs how they want.  For me Fire Emblem makes it and Zelda doesn't, but OoT showed up in the N64 Magazine FuSoYa segment a couple of times, and who am I to argue with Kosmikat?

Nah, it was great. At least as a child, I really liked hearing what other trainers were up to. It helped make the world feel incrementally more lived in, and that little bit more like the (in retrospect, really dumb) anime. To each to their own, obviously, but at least back then I liked it. I remember Drunka once telling me about how he'd keep moves that could occasionally miss and hit the user with recoil on his poks in Red/Blue because that's the sort of thing that happened in the TV show and was similarly the sort of thing that made those pixels that little bit more real, and it beat the otherwise flavourless text of every other move. My taste for the phone would probably diminish if it was in every game, but I don't remember ever getting tired of it back then because I was always disappointed when I came back to an old area and the defeated trainers would just say the exact same thing forever. The day/night cycle probably emphasized that for me quite a lot, they could at least go to sleep for once said the same brain that once left his ps1 on overnight to see if it would advance time in a bit of FF7 wherein they said you needed to "wait" but were obviously meant to do a thing. I guess I just really liked seeing games make efforts towards a kind of social realism, and always noticed it when people behave inhumanly.

Totally agree with the rest of your post though. The only definition that matters is your own. Go on any definitional website and they'll state something incredibly vague about how an RPG is a game that involves controlling a/several character[s] in a well defined world. Zelda nails the 'controls a character in a well defined world' segment of the dictionary definition, but so would ZombiU or even Football Manager. I think I would personally segregate Zelda/ZombiU by saying its not Stat-driven enough, unlike Witcher 3 or Pokemon, and I'd segregate Football Manager by saying there's no exploration - which is probably why I'd exclude Fire Emblem or X-Com too. I mean, for me RPG exploration is about peeking out into the great unknown; Fire Emblem or X-Com levels always start out as unknowns, but they're more puzzles as opposed to some sort of fat-off living environment. While Fire Emblem chaperones you through a really fleshed out world and does a bunch of character development, its exploratory ethos is delivered like a text, you read it, whereas Pokemon, Witcher, or Final Fantasy feature kinetic exploration that expects you to explore, you know like the actual verb.

But if anyone disagrees with that, more power to them. If Fire Emblem's an RPG to you and it makes your top-ten or whatever, you're correct.

Even though it is to me as it's a Tactical-RPG (is on Nintendo's site as well) but now even more games have RPG elements even Assassin's Creed Odyssey is being touted as a Action RPG, that lines are more blurred than ever.

Muss wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

The 'phone in Silver was a pain in the backside.  There's a reason why Joey and his Rattata calls became a meme.

Nah, it was great. At least as a child, I really liked hearing what other trainers were up to. It helped make the world feel incrementally more lived in, and that little bit more like the (in retrospect, really dumb) anime. To each to their own, obviously, but at least back then I liked it. My taste for the phone would probably diminish if it was in every game, but I don't remember ever getting tired of it back then because I was always disappointed when I came back to an old area and the defeated trainers would just say the exact same thing forever.

Yeah, full agreement with this. I loved the phone in G/S/C. I loved going back and battling the trainers after a while as well to see how their teams had grown from when we'd first swapped numbers.

The day/night cycle was great, and really did contribute to the feeling of a 'world'. The 'phone, though... Once I realised that all the youngsters said the same things, and had been arse-dialled by Hiker Zypltsck one too many times, it just dropped its charm out through its charging socket.

Anything that exclusively uses incredibly vague descriptors to label things in the RPG genre loses its validity.  There is far more to the genre than just "oh this could work as a fantasy novel plot!" (I mean they aren't wrong that it's one aspect of the genre, but it's far from the only one).  One simply has to look at the genres origins, which is DnD, to understand the facets of it.  Numbers and all of their fluctuating are one of the biggest hallmarks of the genre (alongside the fantasy aspects).  Indeed it's numbers that cut the games borrowing concepts from the genre (such as HP increases) from games actually of the genre.  

Take Zelda for instance.  Besides Zelda 2 there are no variable numbers involved, every single thing has set parameters and the only changing figure is Link's health.  Indeed most Zelda games can be cleared without picking up any additional health, and the experience doesn't change beyond simply needing to play a little more cautiously.  They're action-adventure puzzle games that like to use fantasy settings as their backdrops.

Now lets look at Fire Emblem, a game that is considered by every definition a turn-based strategy RPG.  All of those glorious delicious variable numbers instantly come into play.  All of the stats, level-ups, and abilities play an integral role in the game, just like they do in every other RPG.

One of the most common mistakes people make is using the vague aspects of the genre to try and quantify what is and is not an RPG (leading to the utterly cancerous "you play the role of" argument that floats around the net) while either forgetting or ignoring the rest of the genre's roots and hallmarks, which is how reliant on numbers to determine outcomes everything usually is.  

That all said nowadays it can be fairly challenging to determine what is and isn't an RPG or one of its subgenres as it's become the vogue thing to stick RPG elements into absolutely everything, and on top of that RPGs have evolved a lot since the old days.  But for cases like Fire Emblem and Zelda?  Surprisingly easy to determine, imo at least.

The phone was one of the best things about silver/gold, it's definitely the feeling of a "living" world that really elevates the games above their prequels.

Nah, that'll be the introduction of steel and (especially) dark types, to stop making psychics feel so stupidly strong.  Also the sprinkling of colour throughout, the existence of more than one ghost/dragon (and more than one ghost/dragon attacking move), and two whole regions.

Plus: Blue's elevation to surprisingly tender and in-touch-with-nature gym leader.

The best thing about Blue in GSC was thta despite his maturation he still had that ego from gen 1, proof that you can in fact have a rival that's both friendly and egotistical.

I miss the old style of rivals, nowadays all we get are complete fops like Hau.

I liked psychics being overpowered

Don't worry O_R, they were replaced by dragons for gens. 3-5.

Athrun888 wrote:

The best thing about Blue in GSC was that despite his maturation he still had that ego from gen 1, proof that you can in fact have a rival that's both friendly and egotistical.  

I miss the old style of rivals, nowadays all we get are complete fops like Hau.  

Agreed on all counts.  Character development!  Woo!  Gladion was a much better rival than Hau.

After our discussions I've been thinking for a while about other RPGs as in what I wouldn't say is a JRPG, so more on the Action or Western side of things and what my Top 10 would be for them also with the one game per series rule, which made this super hard but I've had a go at it.

I'd find that even harder than you, Mas. I don't count Zelda as RPGs, and with them out I've not played many at all. Hopefully I'll get my hands on Transistor before too long though.

I think Zelda much like Shenmue on my list or the Souls games are there own sort of genre as how often do you hear another game being described as a Zelda-like or Souls-like, that Action-RPG (BotW certainly is a Action RPG) is nearest you can get, as really can't do a list of just those genres but has reminded me I could have put Beyond Good and Evil or Okami on the list but didn't as I think of them as Zelda-likes.

Which is weird now that I think about it.

So many non-rpgs...

Different opinions on genre's but the only one I can truly anyone being against being a RPG is BioShock, all the rest one hundred percent RPGs to me.

Bioshock is definitely an FPS and not an RPG. Shenmue is not an RPG. Zelda does its own thing but is mostly described as an action adventure. Horizon has RPG elements but leans heavily towards open world action adventure still - I think its more a reflection on the trend to add classically RPG elements to other games, like how Modern Warfare brought RPG elements to online shooters. Then finally Mass Effect is an RPG series but one that by all accounts became progressively less RPG like and more of a shooter as it went on.

See when I picture Action RPG in my head I get Zelda or Horizon Zero Dawn. When I picture Western-RPGs I get Obvilion, Mass Effect, Fallout, Jade Empire.

When I think Action Adventure which you bring up I think God of War (2018), Uncharted, Tomb Raider and till this year Assassin's Creed as ubisoft are saying Odyssey is a Action RPG

It's genre debate time agaaaaaaaain!

As ever, genres are subjective as feck. Unless we're doing a vote, natch.

Yeah like I said it's just how I view the genre and I know Zelda has long been debated by people on what genre it is, over the years on the internet.

If we're playing that game of you say a word and I say what comes into my head then Zelda would for Action RPG and Uncharted for Action Adventure.

Yeah a lot of them are action adventures. Especially Zelda and Shenmue (although Shenmue could just be an adventure).

I'd like to play more RPGs, but there's probably five that I have played and really enjoyed:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles
2. Chrono Trigger
3. Final Fantasy XII
4. Grandia II
5. Pokemon Black 2

See if they're action adventures where does leave Assassin's Creed Odyssey as looks rather lot like these yet ubisoft have called it action RPG.

Odyssey is the poster child for a the trend of RPGifying games. Assassin's Creed is an open world action adventure series, and Odyssey retains that in its game structure, open world design and mission design. The character leveling and combat are where the RPG influence is most apparent and yes the level scaling is very MMORPG, but the actual combat still plays very much to the action side of action RPG other than the health bars. I actually think it is to the game's detriment as instant assassinations are lost.

Maybe the genre just involved over time and Action RPG's or what I think is an Action RPG have become more open world over time, it's nothing new as Western RPGs have been like that for years.

What Ubisoft has shown and how they're talking about AC:O, is what has sold me on this years AC game as Action RPG is a genre I like (yes you may disagree what that is) and them showing me something very much like HZD has me sold compared to the action-adventure stylings of the ones before Origins.

As far as this whole debate is concerned I'm simply going to refer to my above post on the same page. Games like Zelda, with the exception of 2, are not "RPG's". Numbers are incredibly important for the genre. RPGs are derived from Dungeons and Dragons, which are entirely about numbers.

The core element of the an RPG is whether numbers, and their randomness, play a role in the game. Nothing more, nothing less. Games like Zelda are fixed, there are no level-ups. No stats in play. No variable damage numbers. The numbers are fixed.

Games love to pinch RPG mechanics nowadays (heck just look at Spiderman), however in most cases this still is not enough to make them an RPG. One always needs to determine whether something is borrowing a mechanic from another genre or using those mechanics because it is of that genre. Intent and purpose is crucial.