Llyranor

The demo was 'bad' as an introduction to the game, but it was pretty good for me, since I was already familiar with the series. You start the game with one character. Midway in the first dungeon, you'll get a 2nd one. Then a third one just a little after. The first battle teaches you the ropes. All the characters start with one special ability each, and learn extras as they fight more. The learning curve is very low. The demo was also apparently made harder than the actual game for some reason (heck, the boss killed me a few times). In any case, there's easy/normal/hard difficulty settings.

Tales of Vesperia is pretty nice so far. Love the combat system. <3 co-op RPGs.

I want the ability to play a female character, for roleplaying purposes. Don't make me an ugly scarred ugly man, thanks. Urg, men. I hate men. FREAKING MEN. I'LL KILL THEM ALL. Don't ever force me to play a man. I hate them so much. What a useless waste of breathing space. Now, roleplaying a woman - now we're talking, especially if you get to romance other female characters in the game. I want roleplaying options like that. I also want: Good story. Good well written npcs. Character development at start up, looks, stats, class. Skin color, hair type, hair color, facial features and other body alterations at character creation. Good voice overs. Excellent music.

Ironclad made Sins, not Stardock.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Heh, looked okay. The C&C presented from blowing up the town are significant, I'll grant it that. Hopefully the rest of the game offers stuff to that extent, rather than it just being a sole example of such. The writing was pretty average, though, so my interest is pretty gone at that. The Oblivion flashbacks were especially traumatizing (from the engine). I'll pass.

It's too bad PC RPGs have for the most part shunned turn-based combat for years now, whereas the dumbed-down console kiddies get force-fed turn-based after turn-based RPG. Heck, they even made a genre for it.

I would have enjoyed NWN2's combat a whole bunch more if it were turn-based and designed around it.

Mass Effect's sidequests were pretty horrible, but KOTOR's weren't particularly good, either. It was just 'stuff to do' because it was a CRPG and CRPGs have sidequests rather than actually involving stuff.

I'm going to kill you. I'm actually looking forward to AP/Aliens most for the story/writing/characters/C&C/etc, since that's what Obs does. However, that does not mean in any way that substandard combat mechanics are acceptable. Frankly, if a developer knows that one aspect of their game (especially one that'll probably take most of the usual player's time in that game) is subpar, it should be changed fundamentally. If you can't do shooters, don't do shooter RPGs. If you're aiming for a specific type of gameplay, you better deliver.

Oh yeah, I guess this is important too.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169669 I guess that's good. Though, given TF2 -___-, they might just charge us for that. Fine with me.

Man, Krookie, you suck. How'd you ever finish the game?

I thought there were a bunch of previews for FO3 from GC, no? I wasn't really paying attention. Apparently the game was playable at X08 in Toronto last week. Some people were even saying it was best of show (even though Gears2 was playable there, Kaftan - the outrage, THE OUTRAGE). Hahahhahahhsahhhhahahhaha

The problem isn't so much that action RPGs like Jade Empire (or, well, Mass Effect) can't compare to the cream of the crop of action games or shooters (after all, resources are spent much differently), it's that not only is there poor mimicry of said systems, but they also fail to provide the usual satisfaction brought on by combat in good RPGs. From a pure combat perspective, there's really no comparison, and anyone claiming that the responsiveness or actual aiming mechanics are better in Jade Empire or Oblivion or Mass Effect or Bloodlines than Virtua Fighter or Ninja Gaiden or Half-Life or whatever pretty much has some sort of agenda or has extremely limited experience in gaming outside RPGs when in comes to said combat. But that's because RPG devs can't invest the vast majority of their budget on fleshing out the combat system alone. Which is fine. The problem comes when people use that excuse as a crutch for simply poor combat. Where RPG combat can have an edge comes in terms of the decisions you can make, or using the specific skills from a character you've developed. Heck, the IE games or any good turn-based RPG would do a good job of this, offering you a good breadth/depth of options to control the battlefield. In this instance, the RPG elements add to the combat, providing you various options based on your choices in character development. Now, let's take a look at Jade Empire vs Ninja Gaiden. In terms of pure combat mechanics, NG has the obvious edge, so let's set that aside. What should JE be better at, then? Options, tactical choices, and so on. The inherent problem here is that it DOES not deliver this. Sure, you can choose between various weapons or styles, or transformations, but it's all very shallow in implementation. Sure, using a sword is different than using a freezing fist style, but you can pretty much approach any encounter using either. Which may have been Bioware's point, I guess. Sure, you have the choice, but it ultimately felt meaningless to me. Gross generalization, of course, but I found myself not really needing to switch between styles all that much, since the combat situations could be approached readily using most any of them. Heck, I plowed through the game using the straight sword for the most part. A 'button-masher', if you will. Sure, you can dodge and jump, which you can't so much in many RPGs, but these are pretty poorly implemented, and they're virtually the bare minimum for any action game anyway. In NG2, for example, while you're surrounded by various types of enemies with all various types of attacks, all of which can kill you if you stop paying attention briefly, you need to decipher enemy patterns warning you of upcoming attacks, all while figuring out which move (of which you have a good number per weapon) you need in which weapon set (of which you have a good number of) to use to take out specific enemies depending on their attack patterns (eg. you want a good move from a weapon that'll easily cut off arms against ninjas with rocket launchers, or cutting legs off sword ninjas to render them immobile while you focus on more important targets) and identifying threats (mages, archers, suicidal enemies whose limbs you've cut off). Do you risk taking a split-second pause to absorb the essence from the enemies you've killed in order to unleash a powerful ultimate technique, or will that slight pause allow an enemy to land an attack on you (and then get mobbed)? The difference (all IMO, of course) is that one game rewards you for quick thinking (thus satisfying the tactical gamer) AND good reflexes (thus justifying the action component), whereas the other is both lesser from an action perspective, but also in terms of satisfying decision-making. Jade Empire ends up feeling very simplistic. You walk around the enemy, pretty much free of any risk of harm. If the enemy shoots at you, you roll. You're left at your own pace to go beat up the enemy. The AI is dumb. You can use anything you want on them. Some may argue that that's the point of a RPG system in an action combat system, 'options'. I disagree. The game needs to provide you with reasons for picking a specific option during a specific situation (I'm cutting that rocket launcher ninja's arm off because he will kill me if I focus on less threatening enemies first, and I'm not killing him outright because that'll trigger a spawn for another ninja; I'll focus on lesser threats before I cross that bridge) rather than 'I'm roleplaying a swordsman so I'll use a sword style against these guys. Chop chop chop'. You can even have an ice ranged spell, or a thunder fist, or transform into a frog, but ultimately it's all the same. You could go through the various battles using any or just one of those. I like to have my options available DURING combat, not just based on which skills I've upgraded. Eg. There should be different ways in which I could use a sword style, but which way would depend on what this specific scenario calls for. As for games like Ninja Gaiden being too hard - that's what difficulty levels are for. Dumbing down the systems isn't the solution. That's what Jade Empire ultimately ends up feeling as. A dumbed-down combat system. Same with Mass Effect. Sure, you have biotics, but their application is virtually automation. Just use biotics whenever they recharge on any enemy you see. Otherwise just point and shoot. It's shallow, it's dumbed-down. It can be entertaining for a while, but it's not particularly satisfying from a pure combat perspective. Other shooters may try to provide challenge with various enemy patterns, AI adapting to the situation, or just simply different situations. ME doesn't do that. It just pitches you with enemies who stand and shoot at you, or who charge at you. Every battle repeats itself. Thinking about it, maybe the games just don't make good use of their options. Rather than providing with similar combat situations over and over again, they should provide enough variety to reward different types of character, rather than every battle being the same for every character (eg. one battle being easier with biotics, the next being more accessible for the soldier, etc, while providing OTHER options - perhaps more difficult, but still possible - for other types of characters). Provide variety to take advantage of your character skills. Thanks. For the record, I played JE and ME to their completion. I even enjoyed ME and look forward to the sequel. But the combat system has little to do with that. I also think action RPGs have a lot of potential. I actually quite enjoy the Tales line of JRPGs, for example. They provide satisfying action combat, while still allowing you access to a wider set of skills that you wouldn't really get in a pure action game. It works well. Alpha Protocol and Aliens RPG essentially need to get their shooting mechanics down pat first and foremost, and THEN integrate in 'RPG elements'. I lost my train of thought a while ago. Oh well. /textwall

goty They just need to fix a few issues here and there. But the game itself.... whoosh.

You're right, Pop. Forgive me. Morrowind's combat was even more atrocious than Oblivion's.

I'd agree with JE if I hadn't played Oblivion recently. Mass Effect has pretty mediocre shooting mechanics, but they're still light-years beyond Bloodlines. Alpha Protocol and Aliens: The Cooking RPG better have awesome shooting mechanics, regardless of RPG elements.

NG2 is in my GOTY candidate list. Finished it ages ago. I'm just waiting for the patch to play mission mode or additional replays. Speaking of GOTY candidate lists, Castle Crashers is the next applicant. 4p co-op beat-em-up on XBLA. 1200 MS pts. Anyone who's not an idiot, get this game STAT.

Nick is bitter because Jaheira stopped talking to him because he played a wild mage and got turned into a female character either through random magic or some other equipment he didn't remember wearing.

The problem with Bioware romance characters is that they're completely boring (as opposed to other Bioware characters ROFLTUNASANDWICH) if you decide you're better than them.

We have standards. Shadowrun sucks. Go play it on the PC.

I only played the original campaign of the vanilla game. I think I got bored at about the Eldar. Stopped right there.

I'd rather they focus on making the campaign as awesome as possible rather than just spreading out their resources and making clumsily-disguised skirmish missions with a backstory no one cares about to accommodate all the races.