Tokyo Jungle. It's an action survival game that has... I don't know if unique but certainly fun gameplay where you select an animal and run out trying to survive by finding water and if you're a carnivore killing prey or avoiding predators and finding plants to eat if you're herbivore. Each one has different stats that you can increase by completing objectives and even find bits of clothing to wear for stat boosts, which means in theory if you stuck with one long enough your little Pomeranian could kill and feast off an elephant in a straight fight... in theory. In practice it's not practical so you have reason to keep switching to stronger and stronger creatures.
TJ is more of a score attack type game though, but it does have a story mode. I wish there were more games like that, ones that tried to replicate the experience of living like a particular animal accurately, but had several animals to choose from. Put that in an open world RPG? HELL YES.
Yeah, I think it was Spore. And Man, Spore could have been the Next Evo(and MAYBE you could say in a very superficial way it might be a spiritual successor) but nothing else was like Evo. And now I'm reminded just how much I was sad that Spore could have been So much more then it ended up being. I've heard someone on this forum(V1, I believe) mentioned it's actually fun for small kids as it is, but it felt like to me as an adult with no kids(at the time) like a huge missed opportunity.
I think Spore is plenty fun as is, even if there is quite a bit they could've added. The problem is it runs out of steam when you reach the Space Age. God, the Space Age has SO many terrible mechanics I don't even know where to begin with that one... the thing that probably annoys me the most is how you have to personally handle EVERYTHING yourself. Ally gets attacked? You have to run out and help them or they get pissed. One of your worlds gets attacked? You have to rush over and deal with the ENTIRE attack on your lonesome or you lose the planet. Worst of all, one of your allies attacks another ally? Now you piss off someone no matter WHAT you do.
It ends up being far more fun to just create a creature and then make it to the Space Age and stop.
Xenogears had one of the most interesting battle mechanics i have ever seen in a turn based rpg. A mechanic that i have never ever seen used ever again in any form.
The way it works was each turn your characters had a set number of points to spend on attacks. Light attacks cost 1 point. Medium attack 2. And heavy attacks 3 points. The cool thing though was that you could combine these attacks in different ways which could end up giving you a special attack if you entered the correct sequence.
For example 1 light attack followed by 1 heavy, would result in a power punch attack.
As the characters leveled up you got more points to spend on your turn thus allow for bigger more powerful combinations of attacks. I think this capped at 9 points.
This system was also used when you got into your mechs, but instead of generic points each attack would pull from a pool of fuel your mech had available. You could upgrade this by buying better engines and other parts for the mech throughout the game.
It was such an awesome system im sad nobody ever used it again.
The Xenosaga series, naturally, had most of the same mechanics. It's kinda a sequel to Xenogears though, and though it has a lot of the same religious "I want to sound deep" images and everything it's plot is actually coherent and the characters are brilliantly done. The second game's combat system and voice acting is terrible though, but the first and third are pretty good.
There's Xenoblade Chronicles too of course, but of the two Xenosaga seems like it has a lot more in common with Xenogears in terms of setting, tone, and combat system. It feels more like a sequel to Xenogears than chronicles does.
While I enjoyed XBC a lot, that sure was a super half baked battle system. Any difficulty that came about largely came from how you had almost no control over the other two party members, only being able to issue commands when you filled a bar or something. It honestly just felt like a terrible version of a KoToR or Dragon Age style battle system. And of course characters like Shulk whose entire existence revolves around BACKSLASH and Melia who needs specific spell combos to work well were utter trash in the hands of the AI.
I never played XBX or XBC2 so I have no idea how much they improved things.
I do respect their choice to step away from the usual JRPG system, I think a big part of the exploration appeal was being able to seamlessly run around and enter/resolve battles without all the screen transitions.
As someone who is a shameless fan of the Tales series of games, it is more than possible to make a system where the player controls 1 character and the rest of the party is controlled by the A.I. actually not only work but be very fun, but you have to make it so that when they aren't in your direct control the party is competent enough to not die constantly or do stupid things like hit the enemy with an attack that heals them over and over again. Tales games generally manage to do this but most games, Xenoblade included, don't. Hell, most of Shulk's Monado abilities are simply to save your party from their own stupidity like putting up a shield to protect them from an attack that if their A.I. was competent they'd simply recognize was coming and avoid by themselves 9 times out of 10.
