RPGs
Latest
'Final Fantasy' creator Sakaguchi on what makes 'Fantasian' a unique mobile RPG
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, chats about his new Apple Arcade RPG Fantasian.
‘Final Fantasy Adventure’ was everything I hoped for 25 years later
25 years after its release, Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Secret of Mana series) is still an effective RPG.
Retro sci-fi RPG 'Songbringer' arrives for PS4, Xbox One, Mac and PC
The pixel art-infused RPG Songbringer is a love letter to old-school role playing games, and we've been looking forward to its release on PlayStation 4 for a while now. The sci-fi title is out now and available on Xbox One and Windows 10, too. The game is $20 on all platforms, including PC and Mac on Steam and GoG.com, starting today.
'D&D Beyond' takes the pen and paper out of tabletop RPGs
Despite all the newfangled ways one can play Dungeons and Dragons, there's something special about playing it the old fashioned way -- in person with a bunch of friends and a geometrical mess of dice. Still, if you want to modernize your tabletop adventure just a little, you'll have the option soon. Wizards of the Coast just announced that it's working with Curse to create an official digital toolset designed to replace the pen and paper character sheets of yore.
'Pillars of Eternity II' breaks crowdfunding goal in 24 hours
The sequel to Obsidian's critically acclaimed isometric RPG Pillars of Eternity is officially a go. The studio announced Thursday that it's campaign to crowdfund development on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire reached its $1.1 million goal in less than a day.
Daily iPad App: Costume Quest lets you be a kid again
We may have to wait until early next year for the highly anticipated (an robustly funded) new title from Double Fine Productions, but to help hold us over, the company has released one of its most charming previous games for iOS devices. Costume Quest lets you play as one of a pair of young twins on Halloween night. You soon discover that the neighborhood isn't just filled with spookily dressed kids, but monsters as well. A kidnapping occurs, hilarity ensues and the story marches on at a fairly brisk pace. It's a relentlessly nostalgic experience as you trot the dimly lit streets with fellow trick-or-treaters, but the game takes a dramatic turn during battle segments where you must dispatch the demons that are terrorizing your town. As soon as you enter a battle, your character and their costume transform from cardboard and tin foil to full-sized robots, knights and other heroic figures. Being an RPG at heart, combat in Costume Quest is turn-based, and on the iPad's touchscreen you can tap specific icons during attack or defense to boost your performance. The game may appear a bit cartoonish -- and to be fair, the visual style and overall theme seem very casual -- but this is no walk in the park. Battles will test both the reflexes of your finger and the strength of your character, and you may find that you need to gain an experience level or snag some Battle Stamps before you can best certain foes. The game fits well on the iPad, and moving your character around the screen is done by either dragging your finger to new areas or tapping on the spots you'd like to travel. I played the game on the third-generation iPad, and while it was buttery smooth most of the time, I did notice a few instances of stuttering, though nothing that affected my overall enjoyment. Costume Quest is a bargain at US$4.99, and with its lengthy story and plethora of bonus objectives, it'll take you a while to beat it. It's a perfect game for the Halloween season, and if you've not yet given it a whirl on other platforms, you should do yourself a favor and pick it up on iOS.
What makes role-playing game combat good?
This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Last week's column on changes in role-playing combat systems through history ruffled a few feathers, so I thought it would be a good idea to discuss what, in my opinion, makes for good RPG combat systems. I had no intention of sounding like I hated turn-based combat (since my two favorite RPGs use it!), or that every new game was better than old. Responsiveness may be the single most important component of a good combat system. I mean "responsive" in a broad fashion, specifically encompassing four different forms of responsiveness that can all work together: pace, information, animation, and sound. Responsive pace means that when you press the button to have something happen, that thing happens quickly. In Jagged Alliance 2, one of the greatest tactical RPGs of all time, you click your mouse and you immediately see what happens. Your choices register instantly. Or, in games like The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall, your sword follows your mouse when you hold the attack button, and you see the effect instantly. On the other hand, there are games like Anachronox, a fascinating Ion Storm homage to Japanese classic Chrono Trigger. Anachronox does extremely well at setting a tone for the game with interesting characters and narrative, but its sluggish combat is a major drawback and renders the game extremely frustrating in battle-heavy areas.
Chrono Trigger hits the App Store, lets Square Enix fans turn back time
Square Enix just couldn't resist plucking at our heartstrings -- not to mention willing bill folds. As a timely holiday treat, the company's made good on its end-of-year promise, delivering the SNES RPG epic and cult hit -- Chrono Trigger -- to Apple's App Store. If you're wielding either a third generation and up iPhone or iPod touch, the endless hours of non-linear, time-traveling gameplay can be yours for the re-hashing, albeit on a maddeningly tiny screen. That 16-bit nostalgia won't come cheap, either, at $10. But it's a small price to pay for a welcome walk down gaming's memory lane.
Square Enix Market heads to KDDI December 1st, ports the RPG addiction to Android phones
The land that begot Mario, Murakami and okonomiyaki has a lot of perks for denizens of its island chains, like special edition multi-colored consoles or Mother 3. Add to that ever-increasing list of pluses a dedicated Square Enix Market for Android phones and it's clear the Japanese enjoy a home advantage. The recently announced gaming app store is slated to launch as a limited exclusive for KDDI subscribers on December 1st, with DoCoMo and Softbank sharing in the mobile wares sometime soon after. It may have been a good decade or two since the company's RPGs monopolized the latter days of your youth, but there's no time like the present to get reacquainted with those Final Fantasy friends of old. As you might expect, this is a Japan-only affair. So, if you're really keen to take part, you might want to consider relocation.
The Soapbox: The battle for story
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. When I was in grad school, one of my favorite classes spent a couple of sessions talking about the use and importance of story in teaching. It opened my eyes to the fact that stories are one of the most universal elements of the human experience, from antiquity to modern times, ranging from a little kid playing with toys to an adult penning a novel. We simply love to tell and listen to stories -- they grab our attention, spark our imagination, teach us valuable lessons, and create lasting memories. But somewhere along the years, something went horribly wrong when it came to MMOs and stories. MMOs were always supposed to be the ultimate platform for storytelling, as both developers and players could pitch in to weave epic sagas, and for a while that seemed to be the case. Lately, however, I've seen a movement that is thrashing hard against stories in MMOs, typically using one of the following two statements: "Get your stupid story out of my game!" or "Stories are better left to other forms of entertainment." It's made me a sad panda to realize that MMO storytelling is under attack by the very players who should embrace it, and often they're acting as if they're being dragged, kicking and screaming, into future MMOs where story is placed as a priority. Make no mistake: The battle for story is on, and the stakes have never been higher.
Single-player games will be dead in three years, says industry analyst
So game development studios desperately want to move the entirety of our hobby online in order to mimic the recurring revenue model of MMORPGs. That's not exactly news, but it is news when an industry analyst makes an eyebrow-raising claim regarding the immediate future of the genre. To that effect, Eurogamer recently attended a "closed-door, Sony-organized panel discussion on the future of video games," which featured an analyst predicting the end of single-player titles by 2014. Mark Cerny, a "veteran video game consultant," used the 2009 single-player RPG Demon's Souls as an example, saying that its mixture of traditional offline gameplay and social connectivity to other gamers experiencing the same title is the wave of the future. "The funny thing here is, we don't even know what to call this. Is it single-player or is it multiplayer? We don't even have the words. It's kind of Orwellian. If you don't have any word for freedom you can't have a revolution," Cerny said. What exactly is that revolution, and will it be good for gamers? Check back in 2014 to find out.
Chaos Rings trailer looks awesome
Just yesterday, we heard about this new Square Enix RPG due to come to the iPhone this year, and today, not only do we have official confirmation, but a first official trailer as well. And boy does it look great -- over in the console world, Final Fantasy's creators have been saying that they can't make them like they used to, because the newer HD technology just makes old-school artisanship tough to do. But a platform like the iPhone, with its built-in limits on graphical fidelity, might be just the place for the old-school vibe to live and thrive. 3D characters on 2D backgrounds? What appear to be turn-based battles against bosses and summons? A story featuring emo-haired heroes and J-pop ballads? Boy are we in. The Japanese version says "Available soon on the App Store," but we'll keep an eye on the other stores as well and let you know when this drops.
Breakfast Topic: Lessons from Single Player RPGs
I'm sure by now it's pretty much no secret whatsoever that half the team, myself included, spent a good part of the waning days of Patch 3.2 enamored with Dragon Age Origins. Maybe it's the innocent charm of the leading man, Alistair, the deep and involved game world, or the fact that Marilyn Manson totally warned us that this was gonna be big, but I'm in deep. Patch 3.3 is finally dragging me back to WoW with its pure awesomeness, but Dragon Age is still pretty fresh in my mind, and there's more DLC to come.
Recognizing Champions Online's tabletop roots
One of the unexpected benefits (at least from our perspective) of Cryptic's shift from Marvel Universe Online to Champions Online is the professional relationship it fostered with the guys who managed the Champions pen and paper IP. While the crossover from paper RPG to MMO is far from straight-forward, there is a considerable brain trust from which Cryptic can draw in the creation of their game. The Escapist recently posted a terrific article which went into some depth with one such mastermind -- 16-year veteran of the franchise, Steve Long.While Long maintains some unadulterated affection for the HERO character creation system of the pen and paper game, he seems to be of the belief that the current arrangement (with Cryptic buying the Champions IP outright and licensing it back to Hero) is going to be beneficial for both parties. While MMOs seem to be driving the overall simplification of pen and paper RPGs, Long thinks that MMOs have a lot to learn as well, especially in the areas of customization and interactivity with environments.
Are MMOs killing single player RPGs?
With MMOs springing up like weeds in every corner of the game industry, some are beginning to wonder if this recent trend isn't spelling the end for old-fashioned single-player RPGs. Just a decade ago, turn-based Japanese RPGs reigned supreme on consoles, and Western-style RPGs in the vein of Baldur's Gate were the big sellers on PCs. Nowadays, these titles are becoming few and far between. Sure, you've got your occasional Mass Effect and your Final Fantasy XIII, but for some, the writing is already on the wall.At Massively, we think the landscape is considerably more complicated than that. For our part, we've noticed how MMOs are increasingly focusing on single player content, allowing the casual player to solo his way through entire games in some cases, if he so chooses. Instead of single-player games dying in the face of their multiplayer counterparts, it looks to us like the two are just learning from each other and moving towards some of homogeneous hybrid. There's room for debate (when isn't there, really), but we don't think it's time for doom and gloom just yet.
Finally, an RPG for the Wii-- and it's Nunchuk-only?
Opoona is a new game from Koei that casts players in the title role, as a visitor to planet Landroll who must earn job licenses to gain access to areas of the planet and investigate the incident that injured his parents. These licenses correspond to jobs, which the player is free to choose.Opoona is also a game that is controlled entirely with the Nunchuk. The game uses an "Active Bombom" combat system wherein players whip projectiles with the nunchuk. Movement outside of battle is also controlled by the Nunchuk, leaving your poor, neglected Wiimote dangling lamely from its tether.The control system has us intrigued. There must be more to it. There has to be a reason for using the Nunchuk over the Wiimote, other than gimmickry, and we look forward to finding out. Please, have a look at the two regrettably small screens after the break and ponder the issue!
First Riviera: The Promised Land video released
Back in August, Famitsu broke news of Sting's Rivieria: The Promised Land, the GBA tactical RPG, being ported to the PSP. Well now, the first video has been released, and you can see it here. Although, most of the text that accompanies the video is in Japanese, you can still get the gist of what the game is all about, just in case you haven't previously played it. While the graphics do look a bit crisper, the main "upgrade" from the GBA version is the inclusion of voice acting.On Sting's official site, they have loads of Riviera PSP content available for download. C'mon, I know you're a sucker for cutesy 2D sprites![Via DCEmu]
TGS 06: Gamespot goes hands on with Jean D'Arc
Gamespot has just went hands on with Jean D'Arc, the strategy RPG based on Joan of Arc, at the Tokyo Games Show. Although they couldn't read a lick of any text due to the game being in all Japanese, they did play enough to tell the main game will be similar to other grid-based games, like Nippon Ichi's insane library of great SRPGs. One aspect of the game that seems pretty interesting is when Jean receives damage, she, at times, will take a page out of the Hulk's book by transforming into superpowerful Jean and inflicting major damage upon her enemies. After a few turns, Jean returns back to her normal self. They go on to say all the basic elements of an SRPG are here and graphically, is much better than any other similar game on the PSP to date. Unfortunately for us, there's no definitive information on whether we'll get this game stateside. Keep your fingers crossed boys and girls. (Via Gamespot)
