[General Discussion] Improving elements of an RPG

SGC. No, not Stargate Command. Soundtrack, Gameplay, Characters.

Soundtrack is self-explanatory. Hell, this is GFF, it should be an item on everyone's list.

Gameplay: Gameplay in RPGs is an interesting quality to consider. Controls per se aren't really an issue the way they are in action/adventure games, but there are still certain rules that RPGs need to adhere to.

-Menus in a menu-driven RPG must be fast. Really really fast. Effectively instantaneous. You can do cute little sliding/fading transitions if you want, but I need to be from one menu to the next in less time than it takes me to process the thought "I am transitioning menus right now." If it takes long enough that I have a chance to think about the transition itself, it's too slow. Game consoles are fast and powerful now. Take advantage of that. Take advantage of that, Xenosaga.

-In games with statically-rendered environments (Legend of Dragoon, Shadow Hearts, FF7-9), please make screen entrances/exits clear and easy to find. Secrets are fine, keep hiding those. However, the entrance to the next critical area of the game should not consist of 8 slightly-off-color pixels in the most distant part of the map and should not be accompanied by shitty collision detection that makes it nearly impossible to use that entrance once you do locate it. I don't care what the designers' "artistic vision" may be. I don't care how pretty a town, castle, or cavern may be. If I can't actually play the game for the complexity of the design, something is wrong. Legend of Dragoon had a good way of handling this: entrance/exit markers that could be toggled on and off, as well as a marker indicating where your character was on the map. That allowed the artists to design the cities the way they wanted and still enabled the player to find his way around. GOOD JOB. We need more of that.

-On a related note, and this is less of a problem in American-developed games, give me a clear idea of where I have to go. It's okay to have "detective" segments of a game. It's okay to have treasure hunts, manhunts, or other deliberately-ambiguous sections of the game. What's not okay, though, is for the first hour of the game to contain "go talk to the village elder" snore-fests that leave the player with only that one nebulous objective in mind and NO FUCKING CLUE how to find his way to the elder's place to begin with. Less important in later segments of the game when you know where everything is. In the very beginning, though, acquaint the player with his surroundings. Usually talking to townspeople will help. Usually. Not always, though, and that's the problem. Particular offenders are Shining Force Neo and some segments of Xenogears (I seem to remember Aveh being a bugger to navigate).

-Don't let me sell my equipped items. I know, I know, it boils down to my own stupidity, but...goddamn. Castlevania: PoR did this. Konami, it's 2007. You should know better. Then again, I think the 'Vania team are a bunch of sadists anyway.



As for characters, simply put, they make or break the story, if not the entire game itself. I can deal with cliched plots if the characters feel genuine enough. Take Soul Reaver, for example. Classic tale of revenge and betrayal. Older than dirt. BUT--Kain and Raziel made it interesting through their dialogue, actions, and reactions. Lunar and Lunar 2. About the most stock-derived, cliched plot you can imagine. The characters, though, turned it from a boring, typical JRPG into one of the most unforgettable games of the PS1/32-bit era. On the flipside, and I know this is a hugely unpopular opinion, but I couldn't stomach Chrono Trigger because I couldn't stand the characters and how overstated they were (namely Frog and Mrs. Chuck Rock AKA Jane AKA Ayla). List goes on. Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia, Xenogears, and the queen mother of unique and memorable characters, Disgaea. Characters with personality give the game personality. Remember that, developers, and use it to your advantage.

Jam it back in, in the dark.