Best/worst ideas used in a rpg

[Peffico]

Good:

Tales of Symphonia's battle system. Basically your character levels up and learns new skills the way you want them to and the battle system is soooo sweet. Also the enemies run away from you if you are a high enough level.

FFX level up system- I love this level up system. PERIOD. The characters are on a certain path on the grid sphere but they can break away from that and you can have Yuna become a black mage or w/e else.

Bad:

ff7 materia- Ugg this is so annoying. I cant stand how some1 can learn thunder then if you take the materia out of THEIR WEAPON OR ARMOR they forget it.

ff7/IV characters dieing and not coming back..... So I spent forever on leveling up Aeris and Tellah and what do they do? They die never come back and their equipment in ffIV is gone.

[RemyC]

Bad:

ff7 materia- Ugg this is so annoying. I cant stand how some1 can learn thunder then if you take the materia out of THEIR WEAPON OR ARMOR they forget it.

ff7/IV characters dieing and not coming back..... So I spent forever on leveling up Aeris and Tellah and what do they do? They die never come back and their equipment in ffIV is gone.

I loved the materia system. it gives the freedom of experimenting with different set-ups. It makes sense that they would forget the spell if you took it away from them, because the materia is what gave them the power. Its like with having a knife you can stab someone, but if you take the knife away they cant.

I never understood with aeris dying, how you come across her other limit breakers later on like disc two and three. anybody know what was up with that?

[Ack]

You can get her limit break on disk 1 at the Golden Saucer, actually...

[MrPopo]

Good idea: Earthbound's rolling HP meter. It let them put in things like enemies that explode when killed that wasn't an automatic death sentence. And it added more tension to the standard turn based battle. Sure, Jeff just took a mortal blow, but if you can get through the menus and messages fast enough, Ness will get off the life saving heal.

Bad idea: Maybe it's just a bad cliche, but the status element spells in most RPGs, and their near complete uselessness against bosses. There's always that one token boss that is vulnerable to a certain status (and indeed, it's supposed to be used on him), but most RPGs make those status spells useless on bosses, and not worth it on the regular enemies.

[Ack]

True, though I'd say differently about strategy RPGs...at least the few that I've managed to play. Because the enemies are effectively as powerful as you are, a status effect can definitely turn the tide in a battle. But that's partly due to the inherit differences between strategy RPGs and others, where battles are usually considerably faster and with weaker enemies.

I'd agree that status effects are usually pretty useless in titles like Final Fantasy.

[Hatta]

Have any of you played the Japanese FF2? Man that game had a quirky leveling up system. I think the idea was that the experience you get should be related to the challenge involved in a battle, so they tied the experience you got to the amount of damage you took in a battle. So it turns out that the best strategy is to beat up on your own guys so they'll get more experience out of a battle.

I love seeing these early attempts at working out RPG mechanics. Even when the gameplay sucks, it's always interesting to see these experiments.

[marurun]

mechanics gameplay etc....
chrono trigger: double and triple techs. Now that's just one great idea. Combination spells. I know they dabbled in that a bit in games like ff4. But chrono trigger just completely took it to the next level.

I know I'm a little late to this party, but Chrono Trigger definitely didn't pioneer this. Phantasy Star did. They were present in both Phantasy Star 2 (had to get really lucky to get them) and in Phantasy Star IV. You didn't select combination spells. You set up the correct series of individual spells and if the spell order was correct (when it mattered) and initiative uninterrupted you'd get more powerful combination spells. You could also set up combat macros to try and increase the reliability of the combination spells.

[MrPopo]

Yeah, Chrono Trigger didn't pioneer it, but they refined the hell out of it. There were few experiences on the SNES quite like seeing Frog leap down from the top of the screen, impale an enemy with his sword, and watch Crono nail the new lightning spire with a jolt of electricity.

[marurun]

That's presentation, which is different from implementation. The implementation difference is that you simply select the combination tech instead of having to remember which spells work together and arrange them.

I think the latter method (per PSIV) provides more depth. It makes them like "special attacks", and thus discoverable for added enjoyment. The game is designed not to need them, but if you can pull it off the results are fantastic.

The CT method would be like playing Street Fighter with all your special moves assigned in a menu or to different buttons.

[Scooter]

I haven't played tons of RPG's, but I really found Panzer Dragoon Saga's real time battle system to be about the best. You can also reset the emphasis of your dragon during battle so if you go into a battle incorrectly prepared, you can right that wrong before too much damage is done. In general, it really was quite an incredible game.