Hey everyone! I’ve been diving into RPGs lately and wanted to share my thoughts and seek recommendations from fellow gamers. I’ve found myself resonating with Scott the Woz’s viewpoint on random encounters and grinding, but I do make an exception when the combat system is truly exceptional, like in the case of Undertale.Personally, I’m not particularly fond of random encounters and the need to grind excessively. I find it difficult to immerse myself in games that heavily rely on these mechanics. However, I’m open to exploring RPGs that strike a balance between engaging combat and a captivating narrative. While the combat system doesn’t necessarily have to be mind-blowing, it does need to offer some strategic depth.I’ve tried Pokémon games in the past, but they didn’t quite grab my attention. I’d prefer for the game to be available on steam or the switch. In terms of graphics I prefer pixel-art.That being said, I’m eager to hear your recommendations for RPGs that you think might suit my preferences. Whether it’s a lesser-known gem or a popular title, I’m open to any suggestions. Thanks in advance for your input, and I can’t wait to delve into some new RPG adventures!
CrossCode
I didn’t hear about it when it released, only got it on sale earlier this year. Apparently all this time the perfect game for me had already been out there just existing slightly outside the range of my awareness.
It is a high quality pixel art narrative RPG with a single character class that can branch any way they like, in a pseudo-MMO(single player game where the game is lore-wise an MMO that you are one character in, rest of the characters in the game are “other players” but are of course just narrative to us the real world player, but to our in-game player they are their real life friends and you know them separate from their characters). The pseudo-MMO has 5 classes, but your character is the jack of all trades class. So your various party members will be better than you at their one specialty, but if you are extremely selective, you can nearly match them at the same level if you pick only stuff for that one path. The trade off is that this class is supposed to be much harder to play.
But anyway, enough about that, the actual story of the game is awesome and I don’t want to spoil anything specific. Your character starts out unable to talk due to a malfunction of the “game”, but slowly gains more words, it’s not a gameplay mechanic, just a narrative mechanic, but it’s crazy endearing. Kind of like a “little mermaid” type scenario. She still has full control of her facial expressions and body language, and speaking of, there must be thousands of facial expressions. They did not skip out on any work in the pixel art department.
The exploration parts of the game are kind of zelda style platforming puzzles with more of an agility focus. Combat is real-time but somewhat easy, with more of a focus on stringing fights together and trying to survive as many back to back in quick succession as possible. The longer you stay in combat and string fights together, the less overall monsters you have to kill to get all the loot from a zone. Though the max monsters you need to kill at the worst is pretty low. Like 50-100 per zone. And even then it’s optional, but better.
They also have dungeons, these are also pretty similar to old school zelda, but quicker and tighter. Speaking of, character movement/control is very agile for a pixel art game. I’m not generally great at it in other games, but I love it in this game.
Ok, well I should probably stop now. I could probably go on for hours, it’s an amazing game that I’m sad I didn’t hear about til recently, but at least I did eventually hear of it. Now I feel I have to make sure other people don’t miss out on it like I almost did.
mmorschel@feddit.de 1 year ago
Why not try out Western CRPGs?
I gather from what you’re writing, that you’re trying to get into JRPGs.
If you want action-laden fights without random encounters, I suggest the “old” BioWare RPGs:
They’re old but gold and still one of the best.
And there are still:
Carighan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I will say that I hate to call something like Cyberpunk an RPG at all. It feels almost entirely like a shooter, with the RPG parts somewhat tacked-on. This is more evident even with the missing 6th spec tree and how, even after massive rebalancing, the whole level-up and spec-system are entirely irrelevant without a lot of mods.
Don’t get me wrong, modded the system works well.
But as installed, it’s just all rubbish and feels almost forgotten by the devs.
mmorschel@feddit.de 1 year ago
OP asked for “RPGs for people who don’t like RPGs”.
And yes Cyberpunk has all of that:
It’s a proper RPG but with a huge focus on the shooter/action part and yes, in my opinion it lacked on the Quest and interaction part.
But I wouldn’t say that the battle system alone defines a RPG, see Mass effect 2 + 3 and the Witcher.