Strategy RPG Recommendations

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I'll talk more about La Pucelle Tactics tomorrow.

[Jagosaurus]

I'll talk more about La Pucelle Tactics tomorrow.

Lol got derailed quick.

How's the game?

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Sorry, I've had a ridiculous work week. Couldn't play much except on the road. I haven't made any progress in La Pucelle.

So far, it seems easy to defeat all your enemies or complete whatever objective, but there are a lot of secrets and extras. If you want strong characters or advanced items you have to plan very carefully. Being into geometry could help a lot with strengthening your items with several chains of Dark Portals. I've seen some ridiculous ones covering entire maps on Youtube, folding in on themselves, combining, getting thousands of points. I'm not going that far, but I don't think I'll be too weak either.

For a strategy game I'm finding it easy but still very enjoyable. I'm having a bit of trouble with attack spells though. The spells gain EXP as you use them, so you want to use as much SP as you can in every battle. I neglected this at the beginning and, with one exception, all of my attack spells for Culotte and Alouette are just too weak. EXP doesn't scale from enemy to enemy - it just comes from using the spell. If you don't use them, they'll be useless, and you won't want to use them.

There's also the matter of choosing a staff good for an attack of that element, but also growing the magic stats quickly enough to become powerful. You have only four item slots, so it all goes back to improving your items with Dark Portals, which you can't afford to waste and can hardly use well in combat.

Everything's interconnected and not as free-form as it looks, although you still have tons of control over your character growth. Got to focus.

[Menegrothx]

La Pucelle was NIS's first effort, the games got better over time. There's Makai Kingdom, Phantom Brave and Soul Nomad on PS2 if you for some reason don't want to play Disgaea.
You're probably better off focusing on Tactics Ogre and XCOM (+FFT) at first. While they feature less over the top spells&skills (which can be a good thing for a beginner), they tend to have better AI than NIS games, which is very important.

For a strategy game I'm finding it easy.

Still not it. There's even a little hint on the title La Pucelle: Tactics

[Valkyrie-Favor]

La Pucelle was NIS's first effort, the games got better over time.

I haven't played many other NIS games, but so far La Pucelle Tactics is very well-designed and I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Still not it.

Drop it already.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm admittedly not crazy about NIS, but La Pucelle: Tactics is certainly one of their better games.

Phantom Brave is also pretty good - and there are three versions of it! I like the Wii port best.

[Ack]

I'm admittedly not crazy about NIS, but La Pucelle: Tactics is certainly one of their better games.

Phantom Brave is also pretty good - and there are three versions of it! I like the Wii port best.

I haven't tried Phantom Brave, but I greatly enjoyed La Pucelle: Tactics when I played through it around 2005 or so. I tried Disgaea and Makai Kingdom after that, but those games can cause some severe burnout. I didn't return to RPGs for years.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I tried Disgaea and Makai Kingdom after that, but those games can cause some severe burnout.

Yeah I'm not crazy about those either....

Playing Disgaea is like shoveling sand against the tide. So tedious.

[Menegrothx]

As soon as you get it right.
Real time versus turn based and strategy versus tactics are the deciding factors in how different subgenres of strategy games are categorized. In the context of video games, the term "strategy game" refers to turn based strategy games as default.

Strategy versus tactics

Most strategy video games involve a mix of both strategy and tactics. "Tactics" usually refer how troops are utilized in a given battle, whereas "strategy" describes the mix of troops, the location of the battle, and the commander's larger goals or military doctrine.[12] However, there is also a growing subgenre of purely tactical games,[13] which are referred to as real-time tactics,[10] and turn-based tactics.[14] Game reviewers and scholars sometimes debate whether they are using terminology such as "tactics" or "strategy" appropriately.[15][16] Chris Taylor, the designer of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, has gone so far as to suggest that real-time strategy titles are more about tactics than strategy.[17] But releases that are considered pure tactical games usually provide players with a fixed set of units,[3][13] and downplay other strategic considerations such as manufacturing, and resource management.[10][13] Tactical games are strictly about combat,[18] and typically focus on individual battles,[10] or other small sections in a larger conflict.[19]

The word you're looking for is tactical RPG or simply SRPG, which has fewer letters in it that the word strategy (=it's faster to write)

Turn-based tactics

Turn-based tactics[50][51] (TBT), or tactical turn-based[52] (TTB), is a genre of strategy video games that through stop-action simulates the considerations and circumstances of operational warfare and military tactics in generally small-scale confrontations as opposed to more strategic considerations of turn-based strategy (TBS) games.

Turn-based tactical gameplay is characterized by the expectation of players to complete their tasks using only the combat forces provided to them, and usually by the provision of a realistic (or at least believable) representation of military tactics and operations. Examples of this genre include the Wars, Jagged Alliance and X-COM series, as well as tactical role-playing games such as the Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics and Heroes of Might and Magic series of games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_video_game

[Ack]

Menegroth, I think at this point you're arguing semantics. He's in the RPG forum in a thread entitled "Strategy RPG Recommendations," so when he refers to a "strategy game" it can be contextually concluded that he's talking about strategy RPGs as opposed to games in the actual strategy genre.

Second, as far as RPGs are concerned, the words tactical and strategy are generally treated as interchangeable.

A tactical role-playing game[1][2][3][4] (abbreviated as TRPG; sometimes referred to as strategy role-playing game, or SRPG)[5][6][7][8][9] is a type of video game which incorporates elements of traditional role-playing video games and strategy games. In Japan these games are known as "Simulation RPGs" (シミュレーションRPG?).[10][11][12][13]

It may not be correct in terms of the meaning of tactical versus strategy, but it is how the vernacular has evolved.

Anyway, this conversation is now over. Let's go back to discussing La Pucelle Tactics.