Classing up turn-based games, part 2: Defining state and input classes

In the past I've sorta covered (i.e. mentioned) the notion that classing gameplay types is more important than classing game types (I really don't remember when I said that and it's not worth my time or yours to look it up). As I haphazardly introduce classes of state progression and input mechanics, keep in mind that these rarely will apply to 100% of the content of a game and certainly don't mandate anything as high-level as genre. Two games in the same state progression class may be in a different input mechanics class and a different goal/opposition class and a different origin class and etc. As mentioned in Part 1, we're looking for a middle ground for relativism, where everything isn't completely different, but everything isn't completely the same*.

*plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

State Progression

By state progression I mean "the realization of time", or what governs when the game variables (collectively, the "state") are evaluated and updated. I could probably churn out something slightly more formal but the classes can probably speak for themselves. Differentiating "game state" and "interface state" is outside the scope of this piece, but basically take "game state" to include any variables that have a direct relation to the outcome of the game (i.e. stuff like player health and position and not stuff like cursor position (unless this is Knights in the Nightmare)).

In a real-time paradigm, the game state is evaluated and updated independent of player input. Basically this means that the game will progress at the same rate whether or not the player's controller is plugged in. Having a "pause" function which halts all progress does not disqualify a game from being considered real-time, because the pause function switches evaluation to a separate state paradigm which follows its own rules.

In a turn-based paradigm, the game state is evaluated and updated only when triggered by a defined player input. A pause-command function does not guarantee a turn-based paradigm because exiting a pause state does not necessarily trigger state progression. It is necessary to the notion of turn-based paradigms that the player input for progressing the state is isolated and known. Enemies changing attack patterns at random intervals doesn't guarantee the game is turn-based.

KEY NOTE: Real-time and turn-based are not necessarily the only classes of state progression. I intentionally give them separate definitions rather than saying "turn-based is the opposite of real-time", because there's clearly flex room - delays, bullet-time, and timed turns are just a couple examples off the top of my head of ways to split the real-time/turn-based atom. Just the speed at which states progress and any customizability therein can provide countless subclasses.

Input Mechanics

Moving on to input mechanics: the rules of the interface through which the player is permitted to influence the game state ("mechanics" being the rules for an interface and "input" being the system of accepting player influence [it's kind of obnoxious to define "input" - Ed.]). Also important: an action is an externally initiated change in state.

Action mechanics execute individual game-state-dependent actions specified by the player. The game state determines an input mapping; that is to say, the same input in different states may map to different actions, while the same input in the same state will map to only one action. Essentially, action mechanics let the player do things but only at the right time. The player is required to structure inputs such that they will have the desired effect on external states.

The most significant follow-ons from this are that action inputs tend to be layered (e.g. the player must be running to roll, requiring an analog input to put them in "running" state and then a button input to "roll"), interdependent (e.g. the player must be locked on to strafe and can only strafe when locked on), and order-sensitive (e.g. aiming first and then shooting is going to be more effective than shooting first and then aiming).

Tactical mechanics execute a (series of) action(s) determined autonomously to reach a game state specified by the player. Inputs are mapped explicitly to outcomes regardless of the current game state. This doesn't mean that commands are deterministic; only that the evaluation criteria is (i.e. an attack can still have a 10% chance to miss, so long as that's an independently calculated property not dependent on additional player input). The player may need to anticipate what actions will be executed in reaching the desired state, but generally will be more concerned with simultaneously tracking game states. Tactical mechanics allow the player to chart out a sequence of events.

The first implication here is that the player has either a guarantee or a means of evaluating what the effect of their input will be. Indicators, numbers, words - some kind of abstract interface is almost necessary to facilitate tactics (that doesn't necessarily go the other way - just because a game has life bars and damage numbers doesn't mean it uses tactical mechanics).

It's all pretty self-explanatory really; action and tactics are what you expect they are. In an action game you can miss an attack by pressing a button too late, in a tactical game you'll only miss if you roll a 1.

KEY NOTE: While action and tactical mechanics are mutually exclusive (if actions are being determined autonomously the player can't be individually instructing actions...), they can easily co-exist. Pretty much any traditional JRPG where you walk around with an analog stick (action) and then issue orders from a command menu (tactical) demonstrates that. Even further, it's not uncommon for a game to offer both options for the same mode - direct your party around with stylus taps (tactical) OR use the d-pad to walk!

Input Buffering

Speaking of menus, there's one more characteristic to consider - the input buffer. An input buffer is any game component that accepts player inputs without immediately applying them to the game state. Generally speaking, something's probably wrong if the controller itself is buffering input - when the player presses A they tend to like seeing an immediate result. This is more like command menus that accept player input solely for the purpose of browsing potential state-altering inputs. AI scripting and input delays are two more examples of buffering, so long as they offer a split between choosing a command and executing it. 

While buffers more naturally complement tactics (due to the potential for input evaluation and an extended list of commands separated from game state), they are not exclusive to one type of mechanics or another. Hotkeys and point-and-click allow tactical PC RPGs to circumvent input buffering, while button-based action controls can easily be transposed onto a menu (as somewhat depressingly demonstrated by smarthphone touchpad-only ports).

We could certainly class games by buffer type, though it does seem a bit superfluous.

Now

God that all got way hairier than I wanted. Maybe it makes sense if you haven't been staring at it through eight million edits like I have. Hopefully any ambiguities will be cleaned up with some examples/applications, courtesy of Part 3. Yes, we'll take to the streets and take on Final Fantasy XII, Chrono Trigger, Dragon Age: Origins, Xenoblade Chronicles, and many, many, many more.

Take this fun fact home to mom: for the purpose of this theory article I changed my formatting scheme to bold key words and italicize titles. Normal articles don't have key words so it isn't a conflict.

Classing up turn-based games, part 1: When classifications go bad

Is a turn-based game *really* what you think it is? Take this quiz to find out!

Intro to a real-time classification problem

It's a thing where I define terms in a way to clarify gameplay paradigms and set up logical comparisons between like games. I've had the real-time / turn-based distinction on the mind recently as I've been playing Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Age Origins, both games with some kind of traditional turn-based RPG core that plays out autonomously. I discussed in my last piece how these two combat systems work; if you're unfamiliar with them you might want to start there. 

In the present games discourse, identifiers tend to be either meaninglessly high-level ("open-world", "WRPG", "action game") or prescriptively low-level ("RTwPaSC", "GTA with hovercrafts", "FHwDGaDs"). The problem with this type of classification-by-convention is obvious - it's marketing, not taxonomy. The point is to sell an idea with as concise a package as possible, not to present meaningful analysis of specifically what's in that package. It's predicated on advertising to either A.) predetermined tastes or B.) complete obliviousness. 

Do I understand that when someone calls something a "JRPG" they probably mean "linear as fuck"? Sure. Do I throw around "WRPG" as a synonym for "piece of shit"? Who doesn't? But if we want to be taken seriously like the Kotakus and the TheBlaze.coms of the world, we need more precise terminology.  Final Fantasy XII is definitely a JRPG and Dragon Age Origins is definitely a WRPG, but that just tells us where the games were made and that they have been accepted by the RPG community. At the same time I'm aware no acronym or neologism or taxonomy class or even a backcronym (?) can fully describe and differentiate the content of two like 80-hour experiences. They are compound games with a lot of moving parts.

Luckily there's a whole fuck of a lot of categorization middle ground there. We can talk about how both games use analog sticks or characters or HP meters or how they both have combat and magicwizards and at least one elf. Games are constructed and experienced piecewise (at the very lowest level just because that's how computers and brains work) so the most meaningful comparisons, and thus the most meaningful classifications, are always going to be piecewise.

Join us 

next time in Part 2 where we get our hands dirty and tackle defining the terms "turn-based", "real-time", "action", and "the tactics". You can wear gloves if you don't want to get your hands dirty though. Kid gloves, that is.

Shining Force II is like chess, plus it has a chess level!

Isn't that sweet? Right in the middle of this serious-ass fantasy campaign about a late-term evil abortion comes a chapter titled "Rick Moranis vs. Archon" in which the player characters get shrunken down and thrown on a living chess board. It's a game of chess... for survival! Plus Harry Potter hadn't even done it yet so this is literally the first time in the history of fiction that real people were portrayed as fighting against chess pieces. 

Although, should I be bothered that the board isn't correct? Is that a thing of Japanese game designers not knowing much about chess (is it as obscure over there as go is over here?), or did they put like five queens and not nearly enough pawns on the board as an attempt at balance? Because they could've defined the pieces however they wanted to be balanced (since it's not like they behave like actual chess pieces). It's just kinda arbitrary that the board is wrong.

This really made me smile though. The Shinings Force, Fires Emblem, and even Xs-COM are what I mentally categorize as "chess plus" games, where the principles are the same as chess - threaten units with attack ranges, create traps, use placement for blocking - but rather than movement type as the major determining factor of units' value, you have numeric statistics and rock-paper-scissors balances (like Fire Emblem's sword-axe-lance cycle). Interestingly enough (to mention in this context), Shining Force II* is the game that really got me thinking along those lines.

Initiated combat in Shining Force II is unidirectional**. That means the immediate act of attacking an enemy unit does not negatively impact the player unit. Thus, instead of considering dealt damage against received damage (as is a key factor in Fire Emblem), an attack is valued by dealt damage vs. positional advantage. "Is it worth breaking my line for a big attack on that archer?" "Should I box in that high level unit instead of spreading out to attack weaker ones?" The matter of numerical damage aside, this is chess tactics, where the key determining factors of a move are positional - as important as whether a piece is captured are which pieces the move attacks (places in immediate danger of being captured) and which pieces it defends.

Turn order in RPGs usually follows one of two paradigms: the first, that used by Shining Force II, is unit turns, where the game determines a turn order of units based on their statistics, and the player moves a unit once when its turn comes up. The alternative is team turns, where teams alternate order and during their team's turn, the player can move each unit once (as in Fire Emblem). I don't think I've ever seen an RPG using straight up chess ordering, where a turn consists of a player moving any single unit once; you can see how that doesn't really facilitate RPG leveling/balance.

Team turns lend to a more predictive style of play where it's best to map out the opponent's likely next move and plan accordingly. Each player has complete control of the board that the opponent will face in their next turn. Though this does have its similarity to chess on a broad strategic level, the primary consequence is that players are actually making moves with gigantic multi-armed units rather than with individual pieces. There is so much a player can do with the moving parts of their army that a great deal of build-up is required, then rarely paid off, to execute individual turns. Though the player is controlling ostensibly independent units, they need to take into consideration a butterfly effect of consequences if the opponent makes a single unexpected gambit. Though this hints at grand scope, in effect it leads to an extremely safe mode of play wherein turns are constructed in such a way as to focus solely around guaranteed plays for one or two units.

With Shining Force II's style of turns, unit moves regain their chess-like significance as the primary agents of player strategies. Essentially, there is feedback after every decision point: when the player relinquishes control of a unit, they relinquish control of the game. The next turn may be theirs or the opponent's, but they won't be able to revisit that unit until the round is completed. Successful tactics need to account for how each unit on the map can benefit from each individual move, because they will get a chance to take advantage of it before an overall position is composed.

A more specific chess tactic available in Shining Force II but not in XCOM or Fire Emblem (referencing them a lot, but they really do provide the perfect counterpoint) is the sacrifice. Units are reset at the beginning of every battle in Shining Force II - a battle has no lasting repercussions except for experience point gains. Thus sacrificing a unit becomes a viable tactic. A sacrificial lamb can be used to spread out an enemy formation, lead an all-out attack, provide a momentary barrier, or to bait a trap. The lack of consequence threatens to lead to lazy play, where as a player gains the upper hand their strategy loosens and risks lose their meaning. The simple fact of it is that Shining Force II is balanced so that just isn't the case. There are of course guaranteed-win scenarios during endgame, but the pacing of the battles as tiered skirmishes means that a casualty at any point can lead to a substantial statistical disadvantage in the next skirmish. Sacrifices are still a major trade-off, and the presence of such a tactic only makes the game more strategically rich.

It may not inherently be a strength for a game to be chess-like in nature, but in my experience with strategy RPGs and Shining Force II in general it proves to be nothing but a boon. There is a reason chess is the most popular board game in the world and Warhammer isn't. That reason may have to do with date of origin and which game contains orcs; nonetheless, it's combinatorial complexity is something to aspire to, not compete against.

*For the record, I'm pretty sure everything here applies to Shining Force as well. I've just only played II.

**there is a tiny exception to this. Defending units, probably depending on their stats, have something like a 5% chance of doing a counterattack. It's so rare that it's not so much a factor in tactics as it is a forced non-determinism. I'm okay with this in Shining Force II (though it seems unnecessary given that the make-up and exact statistics of a player's squad in a grind-enabled game provides plenty of non-determinism anyway), but the similar implementation in Fire Emblem bothers me because of the drastic implications of a mistake in Fire Emblem. Get a bad roll on that 95% accuracy attack and you may lose a squad member permanently. 

America's Next Top Hack and Slash Part 1: What is a Hack? What is a Slash?

Both as an attempt to research/define the genre and because hell I like them, I've been on the prowl for a hack and slash that really clicks with me. What is a hack and slash? Something that has no concrete definition in the primary gaming discourse. The term is thrown around to mean everything from beat-em-ups with swords (Golden Axe) to click-fest action RPGs (Diablo) to 3D action games with swords (Devil May Cry). Crazily enough, the term originated as a description for any tabletop D&D campaign heavy on combat (and was thus later applied even to such turn-based D&D video games as Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Icewind Dale). Read without context, that's leaves it about as meaningless as "beat-em-up" (a term which I reclaimed already).

Black Isle's Icewind Dale represents the most traditional D&D notion of a hack and slash. An RPG with combat.

That's not good enough for me. I mean, I'm not gonna go burn someone's house down over a meaningless term - I've been through that with "the cloud" and around year five of the prison sentence I realized it wasn't worth it. But after defining brawling (combat with enemies who can counter), there remains a wide swath of melee combat action games uncategorized. And it is immensely tiresome to write "melee combat action game" every other sentence. You wonder why I haven't posted in so long? That term right there.

Naturally I want to try to define the type of non-brawling combat that stars in top-down games like Ys, Gauntlet, Beyond Oasis, Dynasty Warriors, and Torchlight - whether they all fall into a single category remains to be seen. I'll need some games to analyze more closely and I'd prefer ones that gravitate as close as possible to the traditional notion of an action RPG "hack and slash" (Diablo) so as to retain some of the term's original flavor. For now our working definition can be "isometric melee combat games", though it'll become more refined as we go.

I could play Diablo III, but I could also spend the $60 on at least six non-Blizzard-taxed games

The problem in instantaneously summoning such a game from my library is that the mouse/keyboard interface of Western action RPGs adds an additional variable; an extra barrier to comparison with other combat I've examined. Whether the interface precipitates a different type of action or the same action simply feels different through a different interface is hard to tell. If I really wanted to dig into that subject I'd grab the console version of Diablo III and compare it side-by-side with the PC (which I may at some point do). But for now I think it's more straightforward to factor out the extra variable by choosing an isometric action game that was designed for controllers in the first place. Which until the 7th generation was essentially a unicorn and is still not a particularly common thing.

One such game I did recently get through is Lord of the Rings: War in the North, one I really enjoyed for its stripped down leveling and looting in favor of tactical action. It's what got me on this whole kick. War in the North is good stuff, pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in terms of gameplay - challenging action, arena combat, ranged/melee mixing, skill based targeting, and defensive mechanics (blocking and dodging). Something I can get my teeth around. The only real shortcoming is that it's a bit limited on the enemy front - most foes are a basic iteration of the standard grunt, the shielded grunt, the slow bruiser, or the ranged archer. It's also not isometric perspective - not that that REALLY matters, just that I'd like to get a game as close as possible to the top-down archetype (since the perspective of this one makes for an easy counter-argument that it's just an RPG aping DMC conventions). It's a fall back, but the truth is, if there aren't other games out there in its bracket, this search will be meaningless anyway.

The "Fellowship's little brothers" syndrome seems to afflict every LOTR game. As if the idea of an alliance of a dude with a pointy-eared dude with a short dude is really fundamental and intrinsic to Middle-Earth.

When I get to playing, I'll try to take a look at these basic questions to help me understand what's going on during the combat:

• What is my goal in battle?
• What persistent factors are there to manage? Health? Mana? Inventory?
• Are there priority classes of enemies? Ones that need to be taken down first? Why?
• What is the spawning behavior of enemies? Fixed position? Arena-style? Infinite?
• What is my opposition?
• What type of attacks do enemies have?
• What type of defense do enemies have?
• What is the size of enemy groups?
• How are enemy types distinguished?
• How are enemy types mixed?
• How do the enemies react to the player?
• BOSSES????
• What options does a player have in combat?
• At what point are those options available?
• What drives one choice over another?
• How are those choices paid off?

Naturally, good answers for these questions require more than demo-play. But that's of course the point of picking a handful of games to stick with it.

So next time on part 2 I'll be listing up some 360 demos I've checked out, how they stack up, and whether any is truly fit for the title of America's Next Top Hack and Slash for Consoles That Actually Has Some Combat To Analyze, Definitely Not DeathSpank.

The Witcher and Ultima VII are like opposite ends of the Isometric RPG timeline

It's serendipitous that I chose Ultima VII: The Black Gate as my buy-one-get-one-free with The Witcher, as Black Gate is one of the original (if not the first) real-time isometric RPGs, while The Witcher seems to mark the place where the genre transcends itself and merges into the broader BioWare/Bethesda trend of modern WRPGs. Alongside first person games like the Elder Scrolls series and Ultima Underworld, the isometric style dominated PC RPGs for over a decade, providing us with your basic list of citations of classic WRPGS: Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, and Whatever.Com.

Something something something we could talk about how the genre goes back to Rogue and Adventure and how it obviously spawned originally from tabletop games. Anyway, some of the big deals about Ultima VII here in video game world are that it does away with grid-based movement, automates turn-based combat in a real-time format, and introduces investigative dialogue trees (i.e. the player learns keywords that then become choices in future conversations). That's a short list, and I'm skimping here because Western RPGs are far from my area of expertise, but the idea is that Black Gate really cut back on the discretized feel of RPGs up to that point. The isometric style was a giant leap in the direction of real-time cinematic gameplay, even if it was still turn-based and heavily governed by off-screen calculations. It was a much bigger step away from tabletop than, say, the early Wizardry games. I realize this has little to do with isometric graphics, but, well, that's just how it happened. I'm not lying with the above list of examples (or the many more Internet and I could cite) - these games are bound by far more than their visual style, even if it is the most immediately recognizable characteristic. 

With that in mind, I should note that while Diablo II and its isometric dungeon-crawling progeny like Fate, Torchlight, and Sacred are certainly influenced by the WRPG trend born of Ultima VII, their hard real-time action and dungeon-crawling focus pretty significantly distinguish the gameplay to the point where most gamers put them in a subclass of their own. We'll just call them action-RPGs or dungeon-crawlers. 

Not that Knights of the Old Republic and Fallout 3 aren't already closely tied to the classic isometric RPGs of yore, but The Witcher really brings it all back home in that the player can literally switch back and forth between traditional fixed-overhead-camera point-and-click Baldur's Gate gameplay and over-the-shoulder free-look WASD Mass Effect action. The combat is somewhat turn-based, offering a command pause for complex actions (like using spells or potions) and syncing attack strings to rhythmic clicks instead of waiting on one-to-one inputs like The Witcher 2. The classic hub structure is present, latching the player to a temporary home base while they fan out completing quests, but the environments are thoroughly interconnected and deviate from the dungeon model. Dialogue trees, now not as Zorkily arbitrary as Ultima VII, are the fundamental means of fleshing out the story. It all comes together as a very explicit Farewell to Isometry; a changing of the guards. Playing it in 2013, six years after its original release and loooong since any mainstream isometric RPG, is enough to make one nostalgic for the old days. 

Playing The Witcher back to back with Ultima VII gives an interesting look at how far we've come - and in particular, how not that far we've come. It's funny - all those little gripes I listed about Ultima VII yesterday are totally and amazingly resolved in The Witcher (most of them were resolved by, uh, 1994), yet the latter game doesn't seem particularly better. Oh, it's way funner, and I'm far more engaged already. While last night I had to force myself to make it through a half hour of Black Gate, I played The Witcher for two hours straight and was barely able to put it down. But there's nothing driving me to play Witcher instead of Ultima, nothing I'm particularly anxious to experience, discover, or overcome - it's just easier to play. Somehow, in the 15 years that passed between these two games, no new means of interaction have become standard. The medium, or at least this subset thereof, is still offering players the same choices it has been for decades. This really isn't an inherently good or bad thing, but it's certainly an observation warranting reflection. 

Not here on this blog though!

Aside: off-topic, but this isn't really worth another post. The Witcher is notable as a great jumping-on point for isometric RPGs. The genre is notoriously inapproachable, with the general consensus that if you aren't willing to learn the AD&D rulebook, you don't deserve to get anything out of these games. While mastery of The Witcher may not make Icewind Dale any easier, it at least provides a semblance of the experience at a perfectly palatable learning curve.

Alack, how dost one play Ultima VII?

Sure it has one of the most insanifying, reality-breaking perspectives every created, but I knew that going in. In fact, it didn't take long to get over the culture shock and accept that the game is set in topsy turvy world.

And sure it has the choppiest animation I've seen since the Atari 2600 era, despite a 1992 release date that makes it a contemporary of A Link to the Past and other games that have more than two frames per animation. But, ya know what, I got the hang of completely animation-free first-person RPGs like Etrian Odyssey and Guadia Quest, so I'll take any movement at all as a luxury.

And sure, there's no control guide in the game OR EVEN THE MANUAL explaining how to interact with items, pick things up, use expendables, equip gear, talk to people, see your partners' inventories, and enter combat, but the Internet was happy to answer those questions and even provide me with a list of hotkeys to keep in a window next to DOSBox.

And, sure, not an hour went by before the quest required me to break out the packed-in cloth map and turn the manual to the decoder page to understand the runes used to label it, but heck, I guess that's quaint in a '90s PC game kinda way. 

Yes, surprisingly I made it through the first town of Ultima VII in high spirits, drinking in the adventure and puking out the grandeur. While the driving murder mystery seemed transparent, I was intrigued by the use of a Scientology stand-in for the plot's villains-to-be, ready to track down the leaders to see what they were hiding. And from a meta perspective, I was pleased both by the humanism of the story and that it'd managed to capture my interest by keying on a combination of overblown tropes and more subtly unraveling ones. I'd even already had the chance to role-play a bit, choosing which characters were allowed in my party, how to outfit them, and how to interact with the townspeople.

It's not just acclaim that makes me want to keep going with Ultima VII - despite the thorny interface, it shows a lot of promise. Rather than an introductory dungeon or a plodding cinematic montage, the game starts with a puzzle-driven investigation requiring the player to inspect a crime-scene and interrogate witnesses and suspects. This is straight adventure game stuff that would fit just fine in Zork or Monkey Island, which is exactly what makes these old WRPGs unique; they're a purer form of what BioWare's been hacking for fifteen years now. I know I'm not alone in seeing the allure of this combination of brain-teasing puzzles with open-world and dungeon exploration, even if it's not a popular style anymore.

Yet as soon as I set out into the world, free to wander the fields and find my destiny, Ultima VII lost me. I don't have any scathing indictment or obvious flaws to point out - all I know is that I lost interest real fast. And yeah, it may have largely been a visual thing. With such a confined field-of-view, it is extremely difficult to gauge my position even in my immediate surroundings. It's hard to tell how far in any direction I've gone, how far I've yet to go, or even whether I've been to the same area before. It doesn't help that the characters' walking speed is so lethargic that it takes ages just to get from town to town. "Running" makes travel times more manageable, but it also makes the screen scroll so quickly that the already difficult to parse scenery becomes a complete blur - not to mention it makes it extremely easy to run straight into an enemy and quickly lose a fight. And it certainly doesn't help that the perspective doesn't work outside of the towns. The problem with the game's POV is that the buildings and characters are rendered from an angled 3/4 type view, while the ground and landscape is shown eagle-eye. You can kinda forget this in the towns where the isometric buildings obscure most of the view, but in the field, where standalone plants and trees appear to be growing sideways, it looks like the sprites are falling off the world. There are times when certain characters walk upside down because of how weirdly the angles work out.

No, the world isn't tipping over. That's just what it looks like.

And of course I only managed to make it through two battles (lost two as well), as, as difficult as the controls were to learn, there's a whole new set of mechanics that play out automatically in real time once battle starts. So really the big problem is that all of this unpleasantness is just setup for me to try (and fail) to learn the battle system.

I want to keep at Ultima VII even in spite of the messy prototype feel that the outside areas have. I'm kinda taken aback, as by 1992 I figured it was just a given that there would be passable walk-around-and-hit-stuff mechanics and comprehensible graphics (this game came out the same year as Soul Blazer and just a few months before Secret of Mana). By comparison to tabletop DnD, I'm sure it seemed amazingly advanced, and the mystery/dialogue/story stuff is sophisticated and immensely appealing, but it's not a particularly video gamey game. I really hate to put this down as yet another inapproachable WRPG (along with Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment), so here's hoping it starts growin' on me.

Dragon Quest IX on failing to set an appropriate tone

Dragon Quest IX must have the worst title screen music of any RPG I've ever played. Almost of any game I've ever played, except that Cotton 100% just had "Ode to Joy". I mean, come the fuck on. This sounds like a song that would play during a tutorial for a cooking minigame in Harvest Moon, not over the start screen of the biggest entry of the most popular Japanese RPG series of all time. It doesn't get me excited or in an epic mood; rather it starts me off annoyed and slightly embarrassed. Compare that to Skies of Arcadia, Phantasy Star IV, or Xenoblade Chronicles, where almost every single time I boot up the game I sit at the title screen for at least a minute to listen to the music, both to indulge and to get in the heightened state of mind best to engage in the adventure. I only complain because this is fucking Dragon Quest. How can they fail to get even the very first piece even remotely correct? What does that say about where the developers' heads are at? Is their opinion honestly "who gives a shit about the title theme", or is "shallow farce" the tone they were hoping to effect? Whether the game is intended as silly fun or not, I still don't want to believe either answer. Just because Super Mario RPG and Earthbound are silly fun doesn't mean that they trivialize themselves.

Gaining ground on Gain Ground: a Duologue

Duologue. Diatribe. Dissension. Declamation. Double Talk. Double Talk. It's alllll talk. So is this feature, captured from some of the secret email archives of co-bloggers Greg (Yourself) and Greg (Golem).

Yourself: If you would care to make a case for Gain Ground being a strategy game, I think it might make a good duologue. Sorry the Mario/Wario one didn't go anywhere, you kinda took it in a different direction than I intended (I wanted to talk about the characters - the series as a whole compared is a gigantic subject). Not to mention I got real sour on Wario Land II.

Golem: The easy way is to put Gain Ground next to a strategy game and eyeball it. 

Well, eyeball away

It reminds me of strategy RPGs/Shining Force in particular. You directly control one character at a time. The space you can attack is important; can you attack directly in front of you, or can you only hit things at a range? Can you attack to the sides, or can you only shoot straight on? Even the choice between two weapons reminds me of swapping primary weapons on the fly in Shining Force (equipping a throwing dagger for a turn where you can't quite get close enough to hit an enemy by sword). Finally, there's the satisfaction of building a complementary party, and just like Shining Force (or most SRPGs, really), losing a single character is a big deal.

The hard, although more satisfying, method would first find a definition for strategy game by the goals and opposition method. I think you could say there are two possible goals, either A) felling everyone in the opposing force or B) taking out a lynchpin (a boss). Or is that too specific? As for opposition, you'd at least start by saying your army faces another army. The other army also takes advantage of space against you, with strategies like flanking. Actually, maybe your goal at any given point in a strategy game is to occupy the advantageous ground.

Yourself: "Strategy" is hard to define, because it can be both a type of gameplay OR a characteristic. Often it falls into the same category as "action", being a modifier rather than a mode unto itself. Like I was saying last night, you can have a strategy FPS. This seems to be the sense most applicable to Gain Ground, which I'd call a strategy shmup. Strategic gameplay is characterized by improvised rules, non-obvious methods and goals, and recursive strategy (yes, strategy is built from smaller strategies).

As an actual mode of interactivity, "strategy" probably refers to the chess-derived army-puppeteering that we see in, well, strategy games, as diverse as Pikmin, Shining Force, and StarCraft. I wish we had a different word for it - "tactics" perhaps - to make a distinction from the adjectival mode, but I think we both agree that nothing fits better in either case than "strategy". I don't feel like defining it in terms of goals/opposition right now because I think it's tangential to this conversation.

It's a stretch to put Gain Ground into this strategy genre, simply because it's more obviously a shooter. Its gameplay is comprised of shooting things. Calling it a strategy game is the equivalent of calling Super Mario Bros. an action game - yes, it bears the appropriate traits, but is further distinguished. That said, it certainly does fall under the strategy umbrella. It's a strategy shooter, no doubt. It presents the player with a static challenge and allows them to develop, test, and refine their own methods of approach, providing a variety of tools to allow for individualization and improvisation. Simply watching how differently the two of us approached each level evidences the non-linearity of the challenge.

Yourself (7 hours later): Well, I take that back a little bit. Gain Ground could be viewed as a true strategy game. The fact that you only control one unit (or at least that only one unit exists at a time) doesn't preclude it from that style, even if it simplifies it significantly. And of course, when multiple players are introduced (up to three in the arcade version), the player squad starts to resemble an SRPG battalion.

I was originally approaching Shining Force from a strategic combat paradigm, thinking of the entire game as one drawn-out fight. If we instead understand it as a marriage of combat and tactics, separating the unit face-offs (combat) from the overarching army / battlefield management (tactics), it becomes clear how it relates to Gain Ground. Swap in shooting for automatic turn-based battles and hit the real-time clock on the tactics (a la Ogre Battle), and you're pretty close. Keeping in mind that, again, the tactics are relatively simple because of the limited number of independent units.

Golem: The comparison between Ogre Battle and Shining Force bugs me because in Ogre Battle, attacks don't take up space, units do. Ogre Battle is a more macro experience, while Shining Force happens on a per-soldier basis. But then, I don't know how meaningful that difference really is.

Ogre Battle: A More Macro Experience. Wait a minute, there was never a Queen song by that name!

Actually, I like that distinction. If I had my way, strategy would refer to more macro games while tactical would refer to more micro games. Like Wario Ware.

Also, even though you only control one character at a time in Gain Ground, you still face off against an army. Is all-Ike mode in Fire Emblem: The Gamecube One not a strategy RPG? This is what prevents Mega Man from being a tactical platformer, too, since you don't face off against armies. Or, if you do fight armies, like in Contra, you're not interested in occupying any single space.

Yourself: "in Ogre Battle, attacks don't take up space, units do" doesn't mean anything to me. Are you referring to the fact that units in OB must make contact to engage, while Shining Force units are often able to attack from two spaces away or use area-of-effect spells? If so, that's just being nitpicky between individual games. We picked OB to be the example of tactical action because it's the most SRPG-like RTS, and we picked Shining Force to represent the other side because apparently that's the only tactics game you've ever played, but it'd be easy to pick two that sync up better and hold just as true for the rest of the comparison. Units have range ("attacks take up space"?) in RTSs like Starcraft and Command & Conquer, and in some turn-based strategies like Romance of the Three Kingdoms units have zero range ("attacks don't take up space"?). So... what's your point? Both mechanics clearly exist across the real-time/turn-based barrier. It is not news that Ogre Battle and Shining Force are not perfectly identical in every way.

I think spatial control is certainly key to what we're calling the tactics (chess) gameplay mode. As I said (or at least thought) before, one of the things that keys us off to Gain Ground's tactics predilection is that it takes place in static, one-screen environments. Contra is pretty immediately thrown out as a parallel, because - as you said - there's no urge to maintain space. The environment is in a constant state of change. A more revealing comparison is with Smash TV or Robotron 64, which similarly keep the setting to one screen. Here the primary contrast with Gain Ground is the mobility of enemies - they render the idea of controlling space a near impossibility.

Golem: I'm trying to think if there's anything more to be said on Gain Ground, but nothing's coming to mind. I don't think anything is left for issues of range and space. I'll have to look back and see if there are any lingering threads.

I also tried to think about a version of Gain Ground where you control multiple units, and I got Syndicate. Can't say the gameplay is all that similar. Definitely a game I don't know what to do with, but I think we've discussed it before.

You just got Syndicated

Yourself: On the subject of armies and where the line is drawn between the opposition in Mega Man/Contra and Gain Ground/Fire Emblem, I think the barrier is largely perceptive. When I mentioned that strategy gameplay is composed of controlling armies, I meant specifically that - there are two (or more) singular forces which each control a span of dumb subordinates. While I realize that the processor doing computations for Mike Mettaur and Phil Screwdriver is indeed a singular force, they act autonomously without communication - simply put, they're independent AIs. Whatever "teamwork" might happen between them is incidental. Even if they are programmed to act as a team (or, say, controlled by two separate players), they're still behaving with selfish interests and internal motivation. And if they do start to form large scale strategies, and strictly adhere to those strategies, and alternate them in turn, well then, um, yeah, it does become a strategy game.

On the player side, an army/force is defined by division of control, be it synchronously or asynchronously. Gain Ground does possess that with its multi-character squad, but I'm not sure it's a necessary element of strategy anyway. Probably a lot of this conversation could have been alleviated by properly defining strategy early on, but whoops, too late now.

Golem: Well, I can't say it was a bad conversation to have. This is vague territory--as you said, some barriers are largely perceptive--so it's good to have something more to go on.

While I don't know that two players make up an army, it did help during Gain Ground when we had complementary abilities. If one person can throw high and the other can throw far, you can assign unique paths to each player. In particular, I think there were times when one of us stayed back as the other person cleared a path. In most games, coop works just fine playing as identical units.

Yourself: As for Syndicate - is that Gain Ground with multiple units? At least, any more so than any other RTS we've already mentioned? I thought it used cursor control. What makes you call it out - do you have to aim and dodge bullets and stuff? Or just that it has little dudes instead of tanks?

As we discussed IRL (sadly not captured in this duologue - until I explain it now!), the main difference between traditional real-time strategy and Gain Ground (besides the number of player units) is that a real-time strategy uses AI routines to determine character behavior, while Gain Ground uses direct input. This parallels the difference between Fire Emblem and Shining Force - in the former, the player controls a cursor while a path-finding algorithm determines units' routes. In Shining Force, the player directly controls each unit during its turn and can freely walk within set bounds (similar to - lol - Quest 64). Of course, in these turn-based games, the difference is completely superficial - nothing can happen until the turn is executed, so all that matters is the characters' final resting place. In real-time games like Syndicate and Gain Ground, the difference between cursor control and direct input is so dramatic that it would lead most to classify one game as strategy and the other as action, despite the fact that they are both hybrids.

Golem: Oh, Syndicate gives you direct control over the little dudes, and you can decide if you want to control all four of them at once or just one at a time. (I say this based on the SNES one.) Control all four at once and hit down on the D-pad, and they all go down. That said, I just meant it as an offhanded remark, since I can't claim to understand anything more about that game. I'll double check that when I have access to it.

-----------------------------------------------------

And that he did. Happily ever after.

Agh! Xenoblade Chronicles has a platforming segment?!

Agh!
Aghghaghaghahgahghaghahgaq~!

You thought Monolith was just fucking with you by throwing in that jump button. Nope. 30 hours into the game, bam! Platforming. J-j-j-j-j-jump tyyyyyyyme. It's kinda like this wall/cliff face thing that you have to work your way up, complete with branching paths and collectibles. The jumping works well enough, even if the camera is clearly out of its league. If I had to compare it to something- and it's so sudden, bland, and short that I see no point in doing so - but if I had to compare it to something, I'd say it's kinda like Castlevania (64) or a watered-down vertical Super Mario 64 stage like Whomp's Fortress. See for yourself (the first three minutes here):

Check out that view at 2:35! Breathtaking - what a payoff!

I was infinitely amused that they decided to put this in. Not that the game couldn't handle it, just that it didn't need it, nor did it gain anything from it. Unless it's about to become a RPlatformingG, this segment basically classifies as a minigame. But hey, if this is what they're offering in place of the "Shinra We Love You" song-and-dance routine from Final Fantasy VII, I'll take it.

And a-1, and a-2, and-a... Ohhhhhhh Shinra Shinra we love you, Shinra Shinra we love you too! If you don't sing along out loud, the president might mail you a grenade!

Phantasy Star IV: It's happening

Remember when I recently said I was going to give classic JRPGs another shot? I chose Phantasy Star IV, and fuck if I'm not enthralled after a weekend together. Why though? This is so weird. You don't even understand what this is like for me. You can't understand. You wouldn't. This is like suddenly discovering that you're gay. Good analogy, not uncomfortable at all. But this is just one game, and only the first seven hours. There's still the novelty factor (I've played half-dozens of this type of game before, but this time I really want to like it), or maybe I just have nothing better to play, or it could all be attributed to a passing case of the Weekend Brain Cancer. Dunno. I've been duped before (though never on record).

I was hesitant to approach Phantasy Star IV, as it lives on that '93-'95 threshold of games between what I consider "classic" and "modern" JRPGs. Chrono Trigger was the turning point mechanically (overworlds were dropped/downplayed, dungeons became heavily scripted, parties became gigantic and fluid, and the genre got fucking EASY), and Final Fantasy VI narratively (everything is boring, way too much exposition, chronological discontinuities) but the trends were already happening. Games like Final Fantasy V and PSIV were at the ready with linearization of navigation and quests, alongside simplified dungeon layouts. Still, PSIV keeps enough old-school difficulty both in exploration and survival, while introducing some typically Western features like formalized side-jobs and variable equipment. My first impression is that it's the perfect game to act as a gateway into the old while capturing enough of the new to highlight the differences.

The Phantasy Star games, for those not in the know, were Sega's answer to the SNES glut of Squaresoft and Enix RPGs. The series isn't far removed from Final Fantasy, Lufia, or Breath of Fire. It didn't gain nearly the same popularity over here as Square's triumphs, starting on the Master System and seeing only three Genesis entries before going into a seven-year hiatus, to be later resurrected and rebooted as the popular Dreamcast MMORPG, Phantasy Star Online. Of greater note is the development studio itself, Sega AM1 (later AM7 later Overworks later Sega Wow Overworks), who created just about every Sega game you've ever known, excepting those abominations from Sonic Team. They did Golden Axe, Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Altered Beast, House of the Dead, Alex Kidd, Valkyria Chronicles, and most importantly, Skies of Fucking Arcadia. They're essentially Sega's EAD... and appropriately far crappier than Nintendo's. But that's not to say they didn't make some great games, and at the very least, lots of popular ones. Anyway, we're getting sidetracked. I chose the Phantasy Star series because I was a long-time Phantasy Star Online player and wanted to go for something a little out of the mainstream, plus I like scifi better than fantasy, if only marginally. Or not at all. There was a point in my life when I did.

I know I claimed I was gonna go with the earlier Phantasy Star III, but then Greg reminded me about its RIDICULOUSLY unreadable interface (pictured below), so I returned to PSIV instead. I have no clue what is the deal there, because Phantasy Star II uses (Microsoft-Windows-inspired) menus almost identical to IV. It makes Crimson Shroud (which I was just moaning about last week) look like a godsend. The original Phantasy Star is a first-person dungeon crawler, and I struggle most with those. Lord knows I only made it through four floors of Etrian Odyssey II. So PSIV it was.

How did this [Phantasy Star II]...

...transform into this nonsense [Phantasy Star III]...

... and then back into this? [Phantasy Star IV]

Learning to love traditional JRPGs - a true Retro Game Challenge

One of my newest video game friends, Retro Game Challenge, has taught me a lesson I didn't expect to learn. This lesson is that maybe I can like traditional turn-based JRPG?

One of my favorite Japanese turn-based RPGs is Star Prince

Challenge is structured as a literary anthology of eight fictional '80s-styled games, each deriving heavily from a real-world classic. See this post for more discussion of the overarching narrative that explains why you're playing them. The games are presented one at a time, each with four challenges that must be completed  before the next game is revealed. Each unlocked game can be revisited at will, as the challenges usually do not include seeing the ending. The eight retro games, in order of play, are:

Cosmic Gate (based on Galaga, ex. challenge: get 200,000 pts)

Robot Ninja Haggleman (based on Ninja JaJaMaru-Kun, ex. challenge: beat level 4 without dying)

Rally King (based on R.C. Pro-Am (I think), ex. challenge: complete course 2 in 5th place or higher)

Star Prince (based on Star Force/Star Soldier, ex. challenge: beat the boss of level 2)

Rally King SP (modified "special edition" of Rally King)

Robot Ninja Haggleman 2 (very similar to RNH, with larger levels and harder enemies)

Guadia Quest (based on Dragon Warrior, ex. challenge: reach level 10 with all characters)

Robot Ninja Haggleman 3 (based on Castlevania II/Ninja Gaiden, ex. challenge: kill 100 enemies)

These capture the most popular genres of NES-era gaming, as well as some of their key evolutions. Star Prince introduces scrolling to shoot-'em-ups, Haggleman 3 adds linear progression (instead of looping) to platforming, and Rally King SP adds nothing at all to Rally King. As I discussed in the previous feature, being forced to play each game for a certain amount of time (long enough to complete the challenges) makes the new games feel like exactly that: new games. Even players coming into Challenge without existing knowledge of what's to come will be primed on the "upcoming" releases by the fake in-game Famitsu/Nintendo Power pastiche, creating a sense of anticipation.

To this end, the game I most avidly awaited was of course the last to be unlocked, Haggleman 3. The first two Hagglemans are too basic for my taste; as arcade-style platformers, they share more in common with Son-Son or Mario Bros. than what we now consider the defining work of the genre, Super Mario Bros. Plus I fucking love adventure platformers like Castlevania II and Wonder Boy III. Unfortunately, what I do not love is traditional turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Ultima III. I've tried to weather a number of these games and simply don't have the patience for it, nor do I derive much pleasure from incessant turn-based battling. But Retro Game Challenge gave me no choice: if I wanted to play Haggleman 3, I was going to have to stomach at least a few hours of Guadia Quest. 

What's shocking is that this dangling carrot was all I needed to become engaged in Guadia Quest, to the extent that I didn't even put it down after unlocking Haggleman 3. Up til that point, I had been playing Challenge as a curiosity, not because I particularly needed a refresher on retro gaming - I already play NES games on a near-daily basis. I wasn't expecting to come away with any greater understanding or appreciation of these game-types - after all, I hold games from the '80s in equally high esteem as those from the '10s. So it came as something of a surprise that an archetype I had already felt decided upon would take on new life in this form. But has Guadia Quest really changed my feelings on early JRPGs? Does enjoying this one mean  I'll suddenly be able to plumb new depths of Breath of Fire and Phantasy Star?

One of the coolest parts of Retro Game Challenge is that it includes full manuals for these fictional "classics"

I suppose first we need to ask how much Guadia Quest actually has in common with the classics - how well it would fit were it released in 1988, as Challenge posits it was. I'm not gonna run through the JRPG trope list in detail - let's just quickly summarize. These games feature quests to save the world, over-worlds full of random battles, towns as shelter/restocking/healing/save points, maze-like enemy-filled boss-topped dungeons as levels, turn-based battles, rigid immutable class systems and character growth, and Java+++ scripting language. Guadia Quest happily ticks all those boxes. Fixed-strength encounters communicate to the player what party level they should be at to conquer each location, experience and gold is scaled to battle difficulty such that tougher victories are better rewarded, and there's even a very light monster capturing system. Save-anywhere is a convenient feature NOT found in most of the classics, though save states are so common these days that it doesn't feel unusual to a retro-player in 2013. The difficulty curve is steep, with frequent death leading to multiple replays of each section. The player's party is made up of a warrior-type (high attack, no magic), a paladin (moderate attack and healing/defensive spells), and a black mage (low attack/defense, powerful offsensive spells), which is about the most basic assortment known to man. Implied die rolls decide whether each attack hits, criticals, or misses. 

"A", "B", and "Z". Boy this guy was creative with his character names. Mine were "You", "Womp", and "Yaky"

If Guadia Quest makes significant modifications to the JRPG formula, I don't know the formula well enough to notice. So it's not the gameplay itself that made the difference. It has to be something about the circumstances that led me to like this RPG yet reject Phantasy Star IV - and that's intentionally "like", not "tolerate". I think it's one particular sequence of challenges that changed the way I approached the game. The first is to reach Level 10 with each party member, a simple task of grinding as familiar to a gamer as the neckbeard on their chinny chin chin. This facilitates a sort of aimless, goalless wandering, where it doesn't really matter where you go or what you see, because you're always getting closer to your goal. There is some freedom of choice in that the player can try to survive a handful of high-level encounters or safely power through dozens of easier ones, but the goal remains abstract. It doesn't really matter which way you go.

The following challenge requires the player to obtain 1000 gold. As each battle comes with a monetary reward, this at first seems the exact same as the previous objective. But this treasure-hunt in fact highlights the adventurous nature of the genre, reminding me more of Dark Souls than Final Fantasy V. The need for greater rewards than victory-pennies (I think that was a kenning!) centers the experience around defying immediate danger in order to make it as far as possible on individual expeditions, always trying to make one more step on failing legs rather than giving up your progress by using a town portal. La-Mulana was another adventure that kindled this same spirit; the notion that powering up cannot in and of itself be an end. The difference between this type of play and run-of-the-mill grinding is that each quest for treasure has its own binary metric of success: you either find the gold, or you don't. There's no in-between, no reward for making it halfway. It brings life, purpose, and risk to each step forward. "Can I make it across the room without running into a random battle?" "Is it worth setting myself back 500 gold to get better equipment to survive deeper into the dungeons?" Like Dark Souls, there's a weight to failure - continue to screw up, and you're going to be sinking more and more gold into revival and healing items, which pulls you further and further from your goal. There's also an exhaustibility to rewards - you can't collect the same treasure chest twice, so you have to forge on to new territory.

I'm honestly not sure how well this immediacy will be preserved when I inevitably retry a classic I had previously dismissed (probably gonna be Phantasy Star III). True, it's simply a matter of mindset and didn't involve any real change to gameplay, but I was also being externally motivated to think that way. If I had a blog, you might be able to follow how well this experiment goes. Unfortunately, I don't :(

Awakening the potential with Fire Emblem

The collective Fire Emblem is a great experience. I've said it before - it made my top 10 SRPGs of all time. The problem is that it's composed of something like a dozen individual games spanning 20+ years. That's a whole hell of a lot to simplify into just one generalized playthrough memory, but it does so with no problem. They're all the exact same. And I'm not talking like "all [insert-genre]s are the same!", I'm talking like exact same characters, exact same classes, exact same combat rules, exact same environments, exact same subject matter, exact same story, exact same graphics, exact same music, exact same everything. Okay, maybe they change the main character's hair color from time to time. Seriously. It's not even like iterations of a fighting game where they at least throw in a handful of new characters and arenas. I would honesty say, mean, and fight to the death over the claim that there is more variety in the Street Fighter II subseries (i.e. Turbo, Super, Champ. Ed., etc.) than there is in Fire Emblem's entire discography.

Then there's that "trademark" element, permanent character death. I'm going to move my diatribe against perma-death* to the end of the post, because it's going to be lost on anyone who isn't a series fan.

Fire Emblem: Awakening wants to finally take a step forward with the series. It'll blow classicists minds right off the bat by providing the option to turn off perma-death. While I'm a bit insulted by the fact that this mode is called "Casual" - fuck you Nintendo, I'm playing a goddamn Fire Emblem game - it's an addition that totally opens up the strategic playing field to a degree never available before. Think of how your tactics will change, now that units are disposable. If all you can see is an easier, "casualer" game, you aren't being creative enough. 

Allowing units to perma-live is a natural decision considering the focus of the game's evolution: role-playing. Where warriors' growth was once rigidly predestined (except in Sacred Stones where you could choose-your-evolution), Awakening introduces that role-playingist of role-playing elements: customization. As a matter of fact, someone might argue that a game cannot be an RPG without character/world customixation. The degree to which that's true can be sidelined for this discussion, because directly compared, Awakening is much more an RPG than its predecessors. The first thing the game has you do is create an avatar - his (or her!) appearance, name, and statistical preference. The demo suggests that this may be an Ishmael character - one of my preferred tacks to video game storytelling. Other characters promise to have flexible classes and skill sets, deepening their individual roles and allowing the player to create a personalized army.

The game's newborn visual style emphasizes this further. Equipment is displayed in true paper-doll fashion and battles are viewed from an (optional) first-person perspective. Synergizing teammates are shown entering battle side-by-side, rather than as a hidden statistical bonus. The game wants to draw you deeper into the emotional level of the combat.

Boringer players might object and lament that "hey, you got your micro-managing Tactics in my pure chess-like board-game strategy", but, who gives a fuck. For better or worse, it is indeed time for a change, and Awakening seems to bring a bit of that spirit. Maybe it's not the utter revolution the series needs, but it's the minor uprising it deserves (TM (Batman (TM))). 

I am gonna call bullshit on the hero being called Crom though. I mean, fuck that. Or I guess I should say "then the hell with you!"

*Perma-death, as it's so fondly called by fans, is fucking stupid. The idea of perma-death is that if a unit dies, you now need to fill that gap with a weaker unit that is going to need to catch up. Since Fire Emblem rigidly dictates what back-up units you have (and provides them in finite supply), it's easy to get into a situation where there is no replacement. Also consider that letting even a single unit die permanently weakens your entire army, as there is no training/practice/grinding to make up for the lost experience. This means that losing units is not only a temporary inconvenience, but a permanent difficulty spike. Considering the difficulty already increases over the course of the game, and the added consequence that a lost unit may have been the key to unlocking further allies or items (thus making one death equal to multiple lost units), it becomes apparent to even the most casual player that letting a character perish is simply not an option. So instead of a system where mistakes have game-changing consequences, you have a system where the player must win without mistakes every time. Which just makes for a lot of restarting missions.

The Top of the Ten SRPGs: Ogre Battle 64

What dost thou hold within thy sword? Ardor? Passion? Belief?

Just try to answer that question disingenuously. What player, confronted by that choice, could try to lever it toward a concrete goal? This question, as part of a series, serves as an introduction to the vaunted, Shakespearean tone of Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. This, you know as soon as you start, is going to be a fucking serious game. It wants you to think beyond the notion of dialogue as a minigame.

You know what really struck me about Person of Lordly Caliber when I first played it? The element that made the strongest impression on my 12-year-old brain? It was the profanity. I'd heard the "fucking damn"-word before, but this was different. This was in a video game that my mom bought me. Suddenly I had my hands on something rare and precious. A real adult world. 

Imagine a game where murder is considered bad...

It went beyond profanity. The game portrays bigotry, murder, and even rape with an uncompromising frankness, simply as a part of the unromanticized truth of humanity. Though the setting may be fantasy, the heroes and villains are people, victim to human vices and real-world injustice. The set-dressing creatures, from the titular ogres, to Greco-Roman inspired griffins, gorgons, and cerberuses, are natural beings, simply a part of the earth and subject to humanity's whims. They don't create evil - it comes from men's hearts. The only monsters, according to Ogre Battle, are greed, lust, and ambition.

The dark and pessimistic nature of this tale is magnified by the struggle undergone by the player avatar. While a lawful/chaotic meter does serve as a vague indicator of the character your actions are creating, the consequences run deeper. While the general structure of the plot remains the same regardless of how it's played, the tone of these events is set by choices between revolutionary factions, whether one executes opponents or allows them to surrender, and the manner in which civilian populations are treated. One of the watershed moments for the narrative comes a few chapters into the game, when the player is given a choice whether to release or execute the leader of the enemy forces. Whichever you choose, this enemy survives and you soon find yourself on his side of the war. Nonetheless, the option makes all the difference to the character. Fate is inevitable - so does one take the wheel and steer his own life, or allow himself to be washed along? This is the type of dilemma that Ogre Battle presents.

If I haven't said much about the gameplay, it's because the mechanics aren't what make the work beautiful. It'd be like starting an analysis of a painting by discussing the brushstrokes. Yet don't take that as an assertion that story is everything. Far from it. Everything about Ogre Battle 64 revolves around the themes of fate, mercy, and order, from the battlefield to the dialogue. The game can't be understood as simply a series of real-time unit-based battles or class evolution and statistical systems. We have to go from the top down to look at how these elements are woven into the greater tapestry, how they play into each other to create a whole.

...B, Battle!?

Of course that wasn't much of a discussion of it's SRPG-iness, but I'd rather take the time to properly introduce the game, since it's something I'm going to be revisiting often. It'd be worth writing a thesis if I had time to go around writing theses all over the place.

Top Ten SRPGs: Part Threeve

Wait, Earthbound isn't a Strategy RPG, that reference makes no sense. Can't change it now. Must... move... forward... to talk about a few unique occupants of the genre.

7. Gladius

Here's obscure for ya. A non-Star Wars LucasArts game from the middle of the Gamecube's life-cycle that I've never heard mentioned even once by another player. Did anyone out there play this game?

The game's advertisement is immediately misleading - it's not really a game about gladiators. Well, it's a game about tough guys who fight to the (kinda) death in a ring, but it's not historically set. The first (or second) quarter of the game takes place in an ancient-Rome analogue, but it turns out that this Roman nation sits directly next to Dark Ages Scandanavia, ancient Egypt, and the Asian steppes. These worlds are populated both by their traditional warrior classes and mythological beasts. This gives a memorable best-of-mythology feel to the setting where you'll see secutors duking it out with giant scorpions, mummies, and bearskin-adorned barbarians.

The game utilizes a combination of group tactics, rock-paper-scissors, and timed/metered critical hits along with a streamlined command system (where you can skip through movement turns directly to actions) to create generally fluid and fast battles that feel less disjointed than in other strategy titles. Some games go full-on board game and use turn breaks as an escape from realism, but Gladius (and as we're about to discuss, XCOM) feels like it could play out in real-time if you stopped the pauses for commands. This draws the player closer to the battle, making each decision feel more immediate and weighty.

8. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
A game I've of course much discussed recently, I debated for a while whether Enemy Unknown is really an RPG. I'm not gonna go through my entire justification here; the main role-playing principle which is indeed a central element of the game is your relationship to characters. They may not speak except for zingy one-liners and have no relation to the plot, but they provide a medium for the player to express himself uniquely. I doubt anyone could get through Enemy Unknown without feeling like they've been in the trenches with their squaddies, feeling every alien kill and human death in congruence with their collective avatar. This projected emotion is executed better than XCOM far better than many by-the-books RPGs, so it's clearly more deserving of the label.

The game feels almost like it needs to be labeled 'action' as well, but in reality there are no coordination-based efforts. XCOM's pacing is nerve-racking, between the fog of war obscuring anything outside the soldiers' fields of view, the permanent character deaths, and the immediacy with which friend can become foe. Even with its futuristic setting and extraterrestrial threat, the game displays the emotional depth of a true war narrative. The "terror missions" in particular evoke images of 21st century urban unrest and its consequences.

9. Knights in the Nightmare

Admittedly, I feel like it's almost an insult to include this game here, since it so completely defies the conventions of genre as recently discussed. Knights in the Nightmare (and many of St!ng's other games) picks and chooses what appear to be a few familiar ideas and mixes them so wildly that it's no longer recognizable as any remotely familiar formula.

KITN (I read it as "kitten") is SO weird. It's a game about ghosts. Each battle has you reliving the final moments of a new set of knights lives, as you are gradually worked into the immediately-post-apocalypse story. You play as the cursor (wha?) as it silently revives these tragic dying memories. Honestly it's all a bit beyond my capacity to describe. The story is a Germanic tragedy, one which in this presentation seems to say... nothing matters and all life is doomed? K, so we listen to death metal all of a sudden?

Don't try too hard to understand the gameplay from video. Just go try the DS version yourself.

Thus rooted in insanity, it's no surprise the gameplay should be so far off the rails. As you piece together your lost memories and one-by-one raise an army of dead knights, you'll be trying to construct logic out of a similarly disparate hodgepodge of systems that remind of this jigsaw approach to the whole. KITN is a narrative in which time does not necessarily pass linearly, but rather contracts toward a point. It is a game about taking small parts and embracing them without understanding (but eventually experiencing) what makes the sum work so well together.

How can you top the bizarre masterwork of KITN? Well I'd say you'd not only have to go off the genre rails, but you'd have to do it with like a goddamn Shakespeare of a plot. Which game is it? Come on, anyone who's reading this has to know by now.

Oh, sorry, not to blue-balls ya. Here: