Asmodeus said:
Milanezi said:
I enjoyed it. But I'd prefer a more action oriented gameplay. In my opinion the gameplay has little to do with RPG, it's the TAKING A ROLE and character development (such as heavy decision making, character creation, etc.) that sums up a good RPG. Star Wars KOTOR 1&2 made me feel like I had taken a role of my choosing and that I was making genuine choices, so even if I didn't like the gameplay much I didn't feel repelled by it.
Recently I got to playing it again and, well, recently the gameplay pushed me away, Neverwinter Nights did the same, and I'm also having problems playing Baldur's Gate EE... But in all those cases I have only one word: patience I lost my patience... Hulk smashes Hulk destroys (sith smile) lol
God, another "me plays a role' RPGer. In most RPGs, you do spend alot of time in combat, so yea, it would be nice if the gameplay was good.
If I didn't care at all about combat/gameplay, I'd play an adventure game. If you don't care about gameplay/combat, why would you care about all this character building and such when most all of it is combat related anyway. If you're playing an RPG with a lot of non combat related abilities and oppurtunities to use them in a fun and meaningful way, then I can understand. But there's not too many of those games around.
You're perceiving creation as the distribution of points (well I distribute points in God of War to better fit my fighting style...), but i mean in the same way that the real me, as well as the real you, build and create our character, constantly through our actions and consequences. Games life Fallout, Baldur's Gate and even KOTOR, allowed me to raise my character like that, sometimes the impacts are really small, sometimes they are huge, and most of the times if you analise them deeply they are a lie (but that's what playing a role is all about).
You got something right though, adventure IS my favorite genre, however we only get shitty games nowadays with small exceptions. And even THEN all they deliver is a nice story, but even a FPS can deliver a nice story, what it can't deliver is the ROLE playing, the impact of, for instance, killing an NPC in Fallout 3 and getting all side quests that would involve that guy canceled. I went through the whole Deus Ex without killing a single target (but the bosses), okay, it's no true RPG, but it's an amalgamation of many games and the RPG element is big there, especially near the end.
Obviously, if whatever my character's been created BY ME for doesn't please me, than it becomes evident that either I or the game have a problem:
a) I'm retarded and enjoy creating character's who will spend the whole game doing something I'll hate. Then it's my fault. Example: playing Dungeons & Dragons as a half-orc healer, I hate everything here, I would NEVER make a character like that, it's subjective though, but it's just not my style.
b) The game presents an option to create a character who's really good at dialogue (the sort of stuff I like the most), but then throws an army of enemies at me and never presents the opportunity for me to use my abilities. In my opinion, the game shouldn't have made that an option to begin with then.
c) Last, but not least. I choose, say, a barbarian, but the game's poorly made, my actions have no consequence, the hack and slash is poor by every standard. Well then, the game failed because the gameplay as whole is broken, no matter what character you create, your experience will suck.
I both "b" and "c", I believe the game is fucked up. I believe that every game should be fun to what it intends to do, and it shouldn't intrude in other fields (like those games that try to mix ten genres into one) unless it succeeds in everyone. If it has a stealthy path to be taken it can't throw a very hard "must be killed by weapons" last boss (yes, Deus Ex, I love you, but you did that, punished everyone who chose to go stealth). But that doesn't apply to RPG only, it applies to every genre.
Anyway, what I was saying was that, as a RPG, Kotor, in my opinion, did not feel broken, the essence of RPG is playing a ROLE (of impact I dare say), it can be action oriented or not, and the RPG might even NOT present a non-violent path, it's okay as long as the action hits the mark (after all, it will be, necessarily where the fun lies). I felt like all alternative Kotor gave me were valid, my Jedi was indeed action oriented, with some hacking skills and good "persuasion" skill, and I enjoyed the action BACK THEN. Nowadays I no longer have the patience to to pause and release and prepare the fight, it's how I feel now, in fact, that means that as much as I care MOSTLY about the "moral creation" of my character, the action IS important to me (in Kotor at least) and nowadays it's enough that even though everything else still works fine, the action now falls short.
You got me wrong friend, gameplay is ALWAYS important, I know I said "gameplay has little to do with RPG", but what I meant to say is "the key factor is the ROLE playing". Gameplay is present in every game, if it doesn't work you don't have a game, you have a book or a movie wanna be that is also rendered fatally incomplete, it's a technical element that must work in balance with everything else, BUT some games can be more easily wounded by a bad gameplay, games like Call of Duty, that rely more on the technical interaction than the story interaction. It's hard to explain, but RPGs have a connection to the player that goes beyond gameplay per se, I'd say, it's making you feel like YOU and your character are one and the same, no matter the impact your actions are causing or not.
