/r/StrategyRpg
A subreddit dedicated to news and discussion related to the Strategy RPG / TRPG genre including WRPG / JRPG games such as Jagged Alliance, Heroes of Might and Magic, XCOM, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem,Disgaea, Front Mission, Shining Force, Super Robot Wars, SMT Devil Survivor, Brigandine, Langrisser, Dragon Force, Valkyria Chronicles, and Final Fantasy Tactics.
Rules
Duplicate Posts Will Be Removed
Stalking, Personal Attacks, and Harassment will not be tolerated
Don't link to Torrents/ROMS/ISOS
No Spam
5a. Please note that users with low karma will have their posts automatically removed. This is to circumvent spambots.
Please Avoid Spoilers
No Unapproved Bots
No self-promotion allowed. Period.
8a. If you ask for approval prior, you might or might not be given an exemption.
Related Subreddits
Kamidori Alchemy Meister(NSFW)
Useful Links
/r/StrategyRpg
Got into collecting my favorite genre so I would like a list if such thing exists.
I think I already have the popular ones either on my sight or in my collection.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like even for RPGs having good plots, srpgs do an amazing job at them. Mostly war stories because duh but something about finding humanity in the darkest of times hits. Either way I’m curious what people think is the best, a question asked time and time again. I can’t even be original in my answer due to it being triangle strategy. I assume a lot of fft, which I would love to rank myself but I’m stupidly waiting on that remake. Either way what do yall think?
I’m curious because I’ve come to a realization, I like a good story in my srpg. And I love voice acting, Bec it makes scenes hit harder to me (and I don’t love reading a novel). With that in mind my favorite srpg over all is Fire emblem awakening, but for this I’ll say triangle strategy. I love the voice acting in that one a lot. Really made a great story even better in my books. I’m curious what yalls favorite srpg voice acting is, what language and why. Oh and I listen to English dubs personally.
No spoilers please.
FFT is my fave, so I love anything in that vein. Heard good things about this game, but it’s a slog so far (I’m 3-4 missions in).
Overall I’m fighting to stay interested. Is it not for me, or have I just not played far enough?
Hi! I'm a hobbyist game designer. Lately, I've been designing a game doc on a tactics game where you're the.. let's say, coach, instead of a god-puppeteer in direct control.
Do you think this idea could ever work, or would it be frustrating as heck to play?
The way the prototype currently works:
So in XCOM you have a chance to hit. In my game your characters do their own thing, but there's a chance they will listen/execute on your orders. Your strategy is a combination of pre-planned strategy and on-the-go adaptability.
Why do I want to make this game? I'm a lover of the Tamagotchi-philosophy; I think a player can cultivate more meaningful relationships to their characters when a degree of control is taken away from the player.
I'm not sure if this game has one. I have seen some character creation mode in a video but I think it might be a mod.
Strategists - We are allowing self-promotion of your games and mods in this post only. This will be limited to SRPGs, as that is the subreddit, so please keep this in mind.
Limit your game to one post. We don't want spam. Feel free to post your game again if you posted last month.
Be respectful. This goes for devs and non-devs. There is a good way to give and take criticism. Normal rules apply.
Don't self-promote outside of this post. You will be removed from the subreddit. You will not get to pass Go. See if anyone notices this new sentence.
If you are irresponsible, your post will be removed. If this becomes a hassle, we will not give the opportunity to self-promote again.
I recently picked up The DioField Chronicle on Switch in a sale and I decided to share my thoughts since I haven't seen many people talking about it.
I really want to love this game. At times, the dialogue is written and delivered like it's out of an Alexandre Dumas novel. There's delightful subtlety and nuance with a good measure of understatement. In particular, the voice actors for Iscarion, Andrias, and Waltaquin often strike an intense but restrained cord perfect for the faux Victorian era being presented. The underlying problem is that the rest of the dialogue is written and delivered in ways that are generic, obvious, and ham-fisted. So that character who was subtly hinting that they might be... Oh, now they're cackling madly at the joy of killing people. So much for the nuance or discrete foreshadowing. The quality continues to decline as the voice cast expands with performances best described as generic drowning out the early excellence.
The narrative is secretly excellent. Sadly, it doesn't often present that way because the narrative is compromised by storytelling that is often uneven, poorly paced, and even hidden. It becomes necessary to make frequent trips to the library to understand what's happening in the plot which is a failure of storytelling. There's far too much "tell, don't show" summarization. It's a shame to see a narrative that is legitimately great - and I don't say that lightly - undermined by so many storytelling missteps. I think it's important to acknowledge that the game isn't telling the story you might assume it is and that the story the game is actually trying to tell isn't clear until the ending in the best possible sense.
The worldbuilding reads like a fusion of Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Tactics, and just a bit of Dishonored with good measures of intricate politics, ancient mysteries, and interpersonal dynamics. Critical context is hidden away in the library, which is updated each chapter, and it's hard to follow the deeper narrative without reading up. The issue here is that the game rewards the attentative player who reads the ancillary material but also punishes the attentative player with careless spoilers. Unfortunately many major plot developments in The DioField Chronicles are spoiled early on by ham-fisted attempts at foreshadowing and even the names of certain character abilities. Seriously, if you to know which character will >!claim the throne!< just look at their personal skill tree. It's a shame considering the potential of the setting. There's a lot of potential and engaging material in the setting but it's all thrown at you in brief little snippets of exposition and very little meaningful follow-up. For instance, there's ongoing commentary that the nobility are awful and horrific. There are even missions where you >!assassinate some of the worse of them!<. Then there's a single scenario around a >!pro-democracy movement and you lead your troops in crushing it!< - along with the characters who are always complaining about the nobility. Unlike Final Fantasy Tactics, where class struggle is explored through a series of personal interactions and the consequences of repressing the lower class is explored... DioField Chronicles has a standalone scenarios, some throwaway dialogue, and then jumps to focus on something else. It makes the commentary on class struggles and nobility feel thematic rather than narrative; like the developers thought that a game set in a world like this needed to comment on class struggle but that it wasn't something they were really interested in exploring in more depth.
Andrias presents as a very engaged and intelligent protagonist, which is refreshing, but the pay-off is hindered by the game's larger narrative flaws. For instance, there's a plot point about a traitor and Andrias believably predicts who it is, undermines them, and collects evidence...all before the traitor is revealed. It's great. But the traitor's fate is summarized by narrator and there's no real character pay-off at what should have been a great moment. Believably intelligent JRPG protagonists are rare and it's a shame that one was wasted here. This is particularly disappointing in the finale which is absolutely fantastic and seriously could have been one of the greatest surprise endings that I've seen in a JRPG...but in practice it doesn't deliver as well as it should have.
The combat is real time with pause with auto-attacks and abilities limited by points and cooldowns. It's most similar to Vanillaware's 13 Sentinels of the games that I've played. However, DioField doesn't deliver anywhere near as an engaging of a gameplay experience as 13 Sentinels. There is a broad range of customization options but in practice they didn't feel as meaningful as I'd hoped because of the fundamental issues with combat. The fact that many of the customization options require grinding side-quests makes that content feel required and hinders the sense of exploration/player agency.
The more fundamental issues with the combat are that you can only control four units at a time and that most of the scenarios unfold bit by bit as switches/turrets are thrown or enemies are defeated. There's a flow to individual encounters on the tactical level that actually works well but that doesn't translate to the larger scenarios on the strategic level which feel artificial and rigidly scripted. Defeat all of the enemies on screen? More teleport in. Throw the switch? Unlock a new area and a new wave of enemies teleport in. Only the immediate tactics for defeating the enemies in front of you matter most of the time, you can't really plan out a broader strategy or approach. You just have to follow the prescribed path forward. The most exciting moments for me were the boss fights - though even these eventually feel rote as you use the same tactics as on smaller encounters - and the escort missions. It's not a good sign for a Strategy RPG when the escort missions are the highlight and those once exciting bosses eventually become regular enemies which diminishes the thrill of facing them.
Performance on the Switch was excellent. Loading times were very reasonable and I experienced no notable technical issues. It's just a shame that the game wasn't a better experience overall.
No spoilers please as I am about to get into the game soon as I had to get a PS3 so that I could play the game due to it being stuck on the system, but I was wondering if anyone was into the game.
So far, I have had experience with Disgaea 1 as while I got the bad ending so far, I have been spending so much time with the postgame anyway, and I bring this up as I don’t know how the second game works in mechanics since I am mostly familiar with the original game via the PC
Been looking, time and again, for over 2 years now, for something of the sort. I found quite a few, but either they don't interest me as Animal are literally like all the same, no customisation, ect. Or graphic are impossible for me to get into the game, or just the gameplay.
Precision: I'm looking for Steam game only.
I already tried a bunch:
I played so many T-Rpg, nearly finished all that exist on DS, currently working on finishing most of the PsP that i found. But my biggest craving that i think i'm gonna give up on soon, is a good enough T-Rpg with decent graphics enough, either good looking pixel or higher that interest me, with a much deeper system on recruits, animals and humans alike. But i've never really been succesful. Only Fell Seal was interesting in its customisation. But beside that, no luck... So little luck that i think i played most that exist by now... But anyway. If you know some that i missed on Steam, i would be more than happy to hear about them and check them out.
I PRECISE! It's TACTICAL RPG that i'm looking for, no regular turn based, or other rpgs. So no Shin Megami Tensei suggestion and the Like, thaaanks you! And it's Steam only!
Edit N.1: If i asked for Steam only, is because it is way easier to find game right away on steam, just add to cart, buy, install, voila. I do keep an eye for Physical game too, but i think i found most of them already, or at least those i know...
I Also seek more so "One character per squad" style, not so muchc the Fire Emblem style, where you have more than one unit per squad, i do still like the fire emblem Style, but... It strike as less interesting, sadly..
And Lastly, i seek game with a more "Interesting" fight area, as in, height advantage (but not obligatory), Bigger than 10x10 square... and so on. Basically more strategically appealing.
I do thanks for those who told me some leads so far that i've either wish list, or added up to my watch list of game to lookout in physical Old school shop. So thanks to all so far!
Hello everyone,
I am doing some research about tactics games. I would like to get some of your personal opinion about :
I'll start with my personal opinion to start the thread ^^.
Favorite: Fire Emblem - Three houses
Why ?
Characters progression and seeing their coolness in 3D animations . Basically anything that reinforces their "Hero" aura, whether its the animations, the progression in classes, the dialogues, the art, the dating sim, etc... I really enjoy the character centric approach of this game and just watching them destroy enemies easily. I noticed that most of my encounter are easy, but I do them because I enjoy just seeing my powerful heroes destroy enemies.
I love a good tactical game in all their variants but I particularly love a game that provides an additional secondary gameplay loop alongside all the war to have a brief break and respite between engagements.
Here are a few examples from the top of my head:
Unicorn Overlord
Between battles there's a world map to run about. Here you can find little hidden secrets (divine shards), develop bonds between units, pick up resources, develop towns and even mine for extra resources in a basic mini game. All of these activities are pretty mindless busy work but they give little dopamine hits as you tick things off and add incremental improvements to your squads from rewards. Perhaps the basic nature of these tasks is actually a positive because it contrasts with the more intense battle stages and provides a minimally demanding mental break.
XCOM
Base building mechanics, unit training, research etc. Again these give a break between constant battles and provides a sense of progress. Deciding which order to develop and research things provides the feeling of interesting decisions and they provide a future payoff down the road.
Dragon Force (Sega Saturn)
This is an old one but one of my favourites as a teenager. Periodically there is a pause in map movements and battles to provide a council meeting time out. Here you can use your generals to fortify key strongholds, search for hidden items, promote generals of your choice and interrogate prisoners with a chance to recruit. It's pretty much a more watered down version of what's in more modern games like the Nobunaga's Ambition series.
Fire Emblem Three Houses
Social and time management simulation where you build relationships with other students (battle units), foster your teams growth and run around on basic busy work quests. Similar to what is done in the Persona series to provide a break from constant fighting.
Other games
The most common way to spend time between battles is usually unit/squad/build tinkering and I can spend probably half my total play time playing around with these systems to find fun synergies and marginal power increases. Games I find that do this well include Symphony Of War, Tactics Ogre Reborn, FF Tactics etc. Basically all the games that have decent class/build customization or squad management (which kind of amounts to the same thing).
So what are your favorite secondary gameplay loops that work well alongside the main tactical gameplay?
I'm interested in hearing what you find the most satisfying and how you think these mechanics could be iterated on and improved in future releases.
Another Steam festival with a ton of turn based games going on sale! This one with more of a focus on the RPG side of turn based games. It's about as close as can be to being made for this sub-reddit.
There has also been a huge push on Steam to get demos out, so you can test out a bunch of upcoming games and their demos. If you're like me and have gone through most of the titans of the genre already there is a great "Popular upcoming" tab that helps surface some lesser known indie games.
Hope you can all find something new to enjoy!
Link to the festival: https://store.steampowered.com/category/turnbased_rpg
Just curious as while I know that most of the games are only in Japanese territories, some of them do have English patches, and I was interested in trying out the Saturn ones first.
Then when I finish the Sega Saturn games, I will eventually buy the new one for 8$, so I hope it’s a good investment.
I feel like everyone has that one mechanic in their favorite game that feels so satisfying it leaves them wanting more. For me, the mine carts in a few Triangle Strategy levels and the object interactions for mages in Wildermyth are some examples.
So what is yours? Is it a one-off mechanic the game should've used more? Something you wish other games would implement?
Just wanted to have an honest discussion on the games without spoilers as they are fun games, but can be very difficult at times as while I never played Thracia 776, I hear it can be really difficult.
Secondly, what I also wanted to discuss was the emotional nature of the games as without giving away too much, let’s just say that Genealogy of the Holy War can be quite dark in certain parts of the game.