r/JRPG • u/Jittr_Crittr • 19h ago
Question How Would Ya'll Feel About A Souls-Like Turn-Based? 🤔
~ Post is exactly as the title declares, how would you guys feel about a Turn-Based JRPG with Souls-Like influence? I understand that "Souls-Like" has also become a broad and overused term these past few years, feels like everyone's using it as a buzz-word. But i mean in the context of stamina usage, rolling, parrying, dashing, and that "Choose Your Own Adventure" way of moving around; and a game that is essentially one big boss-rush.
8
u/wrebbit 18h ago
I got some news for you that I don't think you're ready to hear.
-4
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
😠Is it about Expedition 33? I had no idea that game existed. It looks lit asf.
3
u/Dreaming_Dreams 17h ago
it’s a wonderful game, only $50 and doesn’t take you 100+ hours to finishÂ
5
u/Swizfather 18h ago
Damn saw your comment and it’s crazy you made this post without knowing what Expedition 33 was. Boy do you have a surprise coming, that was one of the best JRPG’s I’ve played in the last at least 5-6 years!
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
Everyone else seems relatively surprised too. 😠I'm not gonna look anything else up other than the small sliver of gameplay I did, gonna go in completely blind when the time comes. Looking forwards to it! 😆
-2
u/NormanNailsHer 18h ago
People on the JRPG sub acting all shocked you didn't hear about the French game.Â
We live in interesting timesÂ
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
They also don't seem to be a fan of me cryptically talking about a turn-based style Soulslike game i'm making either. (I don't wanna give away any big info because i truly do think it's gonna be big and don't want the idea stolen) 😠That comment's been disliked compared to everything else, though it seems by the comment to post-like ratio maybe people aren't a fan of my post in general, lmao. Reddit's an odd place.
2
u/Snowenn_ 10h ago
Nah, don't be discouraged.
It's just that your comments about your own game are so vague, nobody is getting excited about a nothing burger. But you're not yet in a stage where you're able to show anything. That's fine.
And don't be discouraged about other games already existing with the ideas you have. Almost all games build off of existing things. Expedition 33 didn't really invent anything new. They just mashed up some stuff which turns out to work really well together. And they had a vision about what they wanted to be and applied their own style to create something unique. For example, the dodging and parrying in a turn based game is not new. Super Mario RPG did it and was released in 1996. There's several other games which had similar mechanics too. That didn't stop the Expedition 33 devs from incorporating it in their game though.
I personally don't play any souls games because that type of gameplay is really not for me. But I love the atmosphere in those games. And Expedition 33 nailed that atmosphere for me. I don't mind at all if other turn based games are developed with a similar atmosphere, because I didn't get enough of it yet.
2
u/Jittr_Crittr 10h ago
Thank you for the kind words, it's actually very refreshing. 😆 I'll remain optimistic, my game is my life's work, I KNOW it's gonna be a big thing!
13
u/TONKAHANAH 18h ago
I think that adding real time elements to a turn based game defeats the purpose of it being turn based at which point you probably should have just made a non-turn based game.
it was a cool idea in Expedition 33, and I think exploring some of those kind of ideas from time to time are nice, but I dont want to see it all the time.
I REALLY hope that Expedition 33's success doesnt convince every one that turn based games should have parrying, dodging, or other real time mechanics cuz that shit gets old fast. I like that can I take my time in battles if for no other reason to just put the controller down to go take a shit if I must.
Im not really a fan of souls like games to begin with. personally I think I would have liked Expedition 33 a lot more if I didnt have to worry about parrying every god damn boss, I dont really find it that interesting cuz its not like figuring out a counter mechanic or a counter strategy, there isnt a lot of thought to it. Every fight just came down to figuring out the audio queues/attack timings to press a button to and that got old quick.
tl;dr = it was cool once with E33, but I dont really want to see a lot more of it, its counter to the genre and gets old quick.
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
I live for staying up all night learning a bosses patterns; Personally feel it adds depth to a game and shows a developers planning if their boss is good enough to have you like that. (This isn't going into bosses with BS Hitboxes that arent so much "Get skilled to beat" and more "The actual enemy was developed like shit", in which case i hate that crap.)
With that being said, it's largely known not to be everyone's cup of tea; and with that being said, I can see how you might not have liked that.
3
u/TONKAHANAH 16h ago
Bosses having attack patterns is normal and expected. Im just not a souls-like fan in any real way so I find the slow and punishing approach to game play frustrating. On top of that I dont get any rewarding feeling from beating npc's, a boss I have to fight 20 times before getting all their attack patterns down isnt interesting me, its just an annoying roadblock to seeing the rest of the game. Most souls like games can be beat'n with in an average amount of time via brute forcing your way through it aka throw bodies at it until you get the muscle memory down. There isnt anything interesting in that to me, any one can do it and it just doesnt seem that rewarding so the whole thing comes off as wasted time in my eyes.
JRPG's are long enough, i dont need that extra padding in them.
-4
u/Kaladim-Jinwei 18h ago
I don't even like E33 but to play devil's advocate, you act like turn based bosses have that much nuance to them when they don't. Usually the thing that makes a turn based game more strategically interesting is enemy quantity than quality cuz then suddenly you have to deal with the fact taking damage/danger is an eventuality not something you can cheese
3
u/TONKAHANAH 16h ago
Usually the thing that makes a turn based game more strategically interesting is enemy quantity than quality
that might be the most wrong thing I've heard all day.
-2
u/Kaladim-Jinwei 8h ago
I'll die on this hill even bosses aren't a threat unless they've got minions or do AOE damage. If it's single target same it's always just block it or heal it afterwards since everyone else in the party didn't take any damage.
3
u/Empty_Glimmer 18h ago
If you like the idea of a choose your own adventure turn based JRPG, boy do I have good news for you about SaGa.
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
Drop the deets bro. 😆 I need some good news.
3
u/Empty_Glimmer 18h ago
https://www.square-enix-games.com/en_US/news/introduction-to-saga
Less the same in mechanics, more the same in ‘dropped into a world to explore with limited handholding and vague goals’ where each players experience is going to be different.
3
u/BeKindRewindPlz 18h ago
Not OP but this sounds amazing thank you
3
u/Kastaprulyi 18h ago
Some of my absolute favorite games ever. The recent remake of Romancing SaGa 2 is a great place to start.
2
u/Empty_Glimmer 18h ago
Yeah I think there is a lot of potential for crossover.
‘There are two bells, one above and one below’
And
‘You must beware the return of Saruin is at hand’
Are very similar as your initial ‘wtf??’ guidance before just being let loose on the world to explore and find quests and shit.
3
2
u/sarcasticdevo 18h ago edited 18h ago
Outside of Expedition 33, you might like Fear and Hunger + Fear and Hunger: Termina (ESPECIALLY Termina which seems up your alley story wise) as well.
3
u/adingdingdiiing 18h ago
I know a lot of people will say Expedition 33, but Resonance of Fate should also be mentioned here. That game was hard!
4
4
u/chino17 18h ago
When it's your first day on the internet
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ FR, I gotta spend more time around this sub-reddit or something.
2
u/draculabakula 18h ago
This is literally what Clair Obscure: Exbidition 33 is and everybody loves it. Its so much of a turn based souls like that potions and enemies reset when you rest at a camp
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
I had zero clue that existed, it looks fucking awesome. 😠I must be living under a rock or something, because it seems popular.
2
2
u/mkmakashaggy 18h ago edited 18h ago
The fact that you're in this subreddit and haven't heard of it is fucking incredible lol.
I've been playing jrpgs for over 30 years and I'd put it in my top 3
2
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
I know right? It seems VERY popular and researching it these past few minutes really solidfy that. 😅 I gotta stay ontop of this stuff instead of posting useless questions. ðŸ˜
2
u/mkmakashaggy 18h ago
Lol nah you're good. 33 is best to go into completely blind anyway, I'd avoid looking stuff up on it of you can
2
1
1
1
u/PKMudkipz 6h ago
I have just the right RPG Maker game for this query but you are NOT gonna be happy about it. Maybe E33 is more your speed.Â
1
0
u/twili-midna 18h ago
That’s Expedition 33 and it was… not good imho. So I don’t want that.
2
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
Everyone else in the comments seems to be glazing it. 😠I think it looks fire, have you played any other souls-likes? 🤔 Maybe it's just not the genre for you in particular?
1
u/MazySolis 16h ago edited 16h ago
E33's problems to me boil down to it gets steadily easier to exploit because of bad RPG balancing, the endgame may struggle to even function depending on how good you are at recognizing and discovering exploitable builds and applying math to determine those build patterns. Its at its best at the start and around midgame it can start to struggle due to giving the player too many tools carelessly. The super boss who should be the hardest fight is arguably the easiest because you can just make the fight not even happen.
Its a weird game and one end of its gameplay makes the other end of it feel irrelevant because either:
You build so good attacks don't matter, because you can either kill them dead or outheal/tank them depending on which point of the game you're at which is why there's no dodge/parry runs on expert mode. This doesn't show up until pretty late for bosses in the game though, but its hardest challenges are very cheeseable unless you apply arbitrary HP boosts added post launch to stop you from one shotting the super boss.
You parry attacks good because enemies only have so many patterns, there's no stamina or Sekiro's repeat parry timing adjustments so its just a rhythm game after a point its a worse Sekiro because Sekiro at least has spacing concerns. Its far closer to Sekiro then say Dark Souls in that sense. But if you have that then RPG stuff doesn't matter because you're effectively invincible now and perfect counters do huge damage so you don't need to really build your character much anymore, at best it gives you less time to screw up but its all the same patterns.
It if anything is only like Dark Souls in the sense that it can kill you if you mess up, but it is not like Dark Souls in that the game is not balanced even remotely well and the cheese isn't that hard to decipher because its just damage stacking. Its very against itself that even as someone who doesn't like Soulslike games, because they're slow, I find those games feel more cohesive. E33 is like a game arguing with itself.
3
u/Zephairie 10h ago
E33's problems to me boil down to it gets steadily easier to exploit because of bad RPG balancing, the endgame may struggle to even function depending on how good you are at recognizing and discovering exploitable builds and applying math to determine those build patterns.
Ngl you make it sound harder to break with builds than most JRPGs. Most JRPGs with builds of any sort are breakable faaaar more easily.
1
u/MazySolis 8h ago edited 8h ago
Ehhhh, depends on the severity we're talking about. E33's theory if all you want to do is smash it ultimately boils down to at endgame stacking damage mods which is mostly a basic math problem where we do multiplicative stacking, then you just blast the boss before it moves. Its the most nothing kind of combat, its a yugioh FTK you always draw and has no interaction and efficient competitive tier FTKs are boring as hell to do unless all you want to do is win.
There's a few more quirky or nichely specific imbalances that vary in terms of how long they break the game, like Lune' Typhoon loop with energizing heal to get pretty much everyone to 9 ap constantly around late act 2 while being effectively invincible if you aren't one shot, or blitzing with Verso to just mass cleave enemies using Fallen Stars within early act 2 because his mods are high for when he first joins and its 5 9999s to everything with barely any effort, or infinite Verso which is probably one of the most absurdly stupid endgame builds I've ever seen because its a build that can beat theoretically any stat block ever but its fairly esoteric to find how to make it.
But yes most JRPGs have bad balancing and I criticize them too for similar balance issues, so what of it? Gimme a Final Fantasy game and I'll probably talk about its balance issues if I remember it enough.
E33's issues to me depend on the phase of the game as what breaks it changes once the damage cap is missing and more importantly make fights literally non-existent. I also believe there's a large degree of difference between a fight that's easy because of overtuned mechanics or easy fight design, and a fight that doesn't even happen due to exploitable game mechanics that usurp the enemy's ability to fight back.
E33 is the latter and its not even a complicated turn loop or understanding some esoteric series of interactions like say Pathfinder or some job based game, its "I stack damage mods until I run out of things to stack, then use big move". Which is probably the most basic to check balance I can imagine and they didn't bother which tells me this is intentional, which sure it can be I just don't like the intention and its a difference of stylistic choices. And if its an accident, then its a bad oversight and a little embarrassing for a game praised so heavily to be this mishandled if breaking the game was not their intention.
1
u/twili-midna 18h ago
I’ve played several (DS1, ER, Bloodborne, Code Vein) and it’s an incredibly hit or miss genre for me. E33’s combat just wasn’t enjoyable to me, along with a myriad other issues with it.
3
u/MessiahPrinny 18h ago
If it's turnbased it's not a Souls-like. We gotta put our foot down on definitions. This shit is getting ridiculous.
1
u/Jittr_Crittr 18h ago
How would you define a souls-like in full? 🤔 Personally i'd go with the stamina mechanics, the dodging, punishing attacks, a boss-rush like layout with annoying enemies in-between, and i suppose the amount of build customization one could go for; Also enemy respawn.
Surely tossing turn-based attacks in the midst of all of that would still keep it Souls-Like, no?
2
u/MazySolis 17h ago edited 8h ago
Souls-likes to me are action games with a very specific sort of philosophy that roughly boils down to "We're going to kill you if you make bad moves, but its (almost) never hard to understand what a bad move is." If you want a game that does the opposite of that last part, see Ninja Gaiden 2000s era a game series that's killed people for about two decades. Its a genre built on punishing player for bad plays and is predominately/entirely dominated by slower paced 3rd person action games which make its overall goal far easier to achieve while making it sensible to complete for most people.
The slower pace is important because it helps readability compared to something like 2000s era Ninja Gaiden which is full of bullshit that kills you for not processing what is going on in a sea of models, particle effects, weird camera issues, and animations. Its not a specific set of mechanics so much as what everything does and why it does that makes it what it is. Because everything you've said either existed before Souls or exists beyond Soulslikes, even harder games in their own way, and no one calls them that. Monster Hunter is probably the most straight forward example as it has most of what you're talking about.
The overall a specific type of action game design that follows ultimately a few specific principles:
All enemies must significantly punish the player for not respecting them, but if you respect them then they are relatively easy to handle (outside of camera problems, an ambush trap, and the occasional vomit a bunch of bullshit type of boss). Its why anyone, even a 50+ year old man who has never played video games, can beat a FromSoft game if they just try hard enough.
To maintain the above the entire game needs to be played with very modest amounts of accessible mobility (or pretty much none arguably beyond rolling) and everything is built around this to make fights readable and easy enough to balance on the developer's end because "Just dodge it lol" is an excusable ask rather then say something like some action games which may use bullet-hell esque patterns to catch you off guard by effectively flooding your eyes with effects. Or something like Kingdom Hearts who's harder end boss design (when its not bullshit due to bad game balance) expects you to respond to their specific attack patterns using specific kinds of tools then leaving their openings which are not as obvious and less there because Sora is far faster then a FromSoft character which gets in the way of readability. No one calls Yozora or Lingering Will "a soulslike boss" except by people who only know how to explain action game difficulty through Dark Souls comparisons.
All encounters can kill you if you don't respect them, there's very limited to zero "trash mobs". This isn't a warriors game, or a typical chump filled random encounter infested JRPG, you are meant to respect everything and if you do then you'll always win because of the above two points.
Stamina is designed to balance the player and force the player to care about what they're doing, because if you don't then you need to make your character hard as fuck to fully use (See Dante since at least DMC3) or make the game stretch into incomprehensibility for the average player (See: 2000s era Ninja Gaiden, or some KH bosses) to keep it hard. Which goes against the readability aspect.
The problem with doing this in a turn-based game is that it makes a lot of the point by point decisions a lot simpler because unlike in a Souls game you have infinite time to make a decision, and all that hinders you is reaction based defense but once you have that down then a lot of things arguably don't even matter anymore. Because spacing doesn't matter in the vast majority of turn-based games, and if it does its usually a grid based game, but grid based games predominately are party heavy games due to wargame roots and managing a party makes readability more difficult and makes balance far harder because you have more points of failure for developers to design and players to execute. Measuring stamina is far easier to manage when everything can be directly calculated as opposed to eyeballing it, which loosens its use as a balancing tool and way to punish the player for misusing.
Also when you have infinite time you have a far easier chance to respond to something, being "in the moment" (which is used to catch someone off guard through intimidation tactics or fake outs) isn't the same when you have infinite time that's why Blitz Chess is a very different expression of game knowledge then "normal" Chess. To counter this we get into ATB/RTwP based systems which depending on who you ask are not turn-based games anyway.
20
u/Lufia_2_GOAT 18h ago
So, Expedition 33 with a stamina mechanic?