The new tomb raider games.?
Blackguards?
Yeah, Anachronox popped into my mind as well. The combat had potential but it was clunky and tedious (and not a massive part of the game either) so dialling that down is good advice.
(As an aside, I found that mapping the debug fast forward function to a handy key or button to speed through animations and transitions cut most of the cruft out of the experience.)
God I loved Anachronox though, and I say that as someone who played and finished it for the first time last year. Anachronox felt like a more hands-on freeform adventure game at the best of times. You could level up but there were no obvious stat increases (so I questioned why that was even needed) and weapons went from Poor to OK to Good to Great etc. rather than having actual figures–gear determined your power. You also used character specific abilities to unlock doors, hack terminals, yammer NPCs into oblivion, tractor-beam items over to you etc. It reminded me of a Metroidvania in the sense that the game rewarded you for remembering loose ends from much earlier on in the game and tying them up using an ability or exchanging an item or bit of knowledge you’d found on your travels. Very cool. There was a degree of investigative work involved.
I hope if Tom Hall gets the band back together again they go more down the route of an RPG adventure and remove/reduce the combat. The world building, ideas, characters and dialogue were exceptional.
“Now excuse me while I go take a Trotsky.”
Driftmoon is one I own and want to play.
Wow, you’re making a strong case for Anachronox, geggis. I should definitely give it another whirl.
At least check out @tomchick’s review. He played through it mostly avoiding combat on one of his runs, so it can certainly be combat-lite in terms of not having to engage in combat. It remains strong on the story driven and RPG fronts, though.
In fairness, when you do get into combat, the systems do have crunch, but the game is designed such that combat is an option in most cases, rather than the point.
I don’t play many RPGs and there are even less I stick with till the end because I usually get so fatigued by them. The only ones I’ve ever finished are Planescape: Torment, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Anachronox, The Witcher (1) and System Shock 2, if that counts. Hmm, they’re all fairly combat light.
I feel like I ought to clarify what I mean by ‘investigative’. I liked in Anachronox how side quests weren’t noted down or revealed on a map so you had to either remember details or scribble stuff down yourself. You had to connect certain things together like ‘What’s this war medal and who would want it?’ and remembering names was handy too. Some NPCs responded differently to different characters so that was also a consideration when you were talking to people.
Edit: I think a lot of games take the magic out of that stuff by solving things for you or making it super clear where you’ve got to go and what you’ve got to do. Take Breath of the Wild for example, I was told about these three trees on the horizon and how, when they merge into one, if you turn your back to them and keep walking you will come across a shrine that holds a valuable treasure. Now I thought I was going to have to trudge up to these trees and work it out myself but, oh no, the shrine had been marked on my map. [I was wrong about this!] Another quest mentioned a beach to the south east and, again, instead of letting me feel the world out for myself, it just whacked a marker on the map.
Yeah that’s a good job selling Anachronox, @geggis. It’s been years since I played do a lot of the details are fuzzy but I too really like using actual word descriptors for skills, that’s a really refreshing change. Doesn’t work for every game, and I’m sure the stats geeks would miss them, but I wish more games used their words.
Reminds me of another game that did this, Battletech the Crescent Hawk’s Inception. I can’t really include it in this group since it’s fairly combat heavy (despite being an Infocom game) but I loved that your skills crept up from poor to excellent. That’s satisfying in a way that watching a number climb to 100 isn’t.
I’ve never been great with numbers and I much prefer the… I dunno, ‘humanity’(?) of describing things with words (or visuals, sound and feel) over an abstract figure to represent strength or charisma or weapon power or whatever. It’s an aesthetic thing, sure, and stat geeks are definitely going to miss the cold hard numbers underpinning everything.
I’m reminded of Respawn not releasing detailed patch notes for Titanfall 2 so while folk know what’s changed, they don’t have a clue by how much. Respawn tell gamers to just report back on how it ‘feels’. The outcry is hilarious but I love this approach because people have to get in game and make their own minds up rather than seeing a bunch of numbers and reflexively grabbing their pitchforks in the comments.
[quote=“Nightgaunt, post:20, topic:129761, full:true”]Basically those games are adventure games built on an RPG engine. What that means is that the object interaction rules are systematized (as opposed to uniquely scripted, as in a point-and-click game). E.g., I can dig anywhere with my shovel, but I’m only going to find something if I’ve followed the treasure map to the right place. When I need to cut strips of cloth, I can use a kitchen knife or a pocket knife or a Martian pod knife, because they all have the same “cuts cloth” property under the hood. I think this kind of thing allows the object interaction to provide a lot of gameplay that normally would be filled by combat without a lot of asset work.
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You might want to look at interactive fiction then. Many works in that vein (systemic systems to solve object oriented puzzles in emergent ways).
How about another inkle game, Sorcery?
Man, Crescent Hawk’s Inception! Played the crap out of that on my Apple II. That’s probably a good example of a game that was crunchy at the time, but now would be considered pretty simplistic. Man, GOG needs to get that thing on their virtual shelves! (Hey, everyone! Go vote for it on the GOG wishlist! For me?)
@sharaleo – You are totally right… Tom’s review makes it sound a LOT like the Ultima Worlds games! I just might have to…
@geggis – How does Vampire Bloodlines fit the bill? I hear a lot of good things about it generally, but I always assume it’s more complex and longer than I want to get involved in.
Re: Interactive fiction – I feel like most IF is of the “scripted one-off interactions” school, but if there’s anything that’s true about IF it’s that if you can imagine a subgenre, someone out there has tried it at least once!
Re: Sorcery and gamebooks – These are definitely lite RPGs, of a very particular stripe. In the classic RPG form, I feel like you navigate the story by navigating the world. In gamebooks, you’re navigating the story, moving node to node through events. And they might present that alongside a map of the world, showing you where you are, but it’s more of an interface for the story than an actual game world. Which totally works! But the gameplay is very often just combat. I do have a very soft spot for the Lone Wolf books, which had a cool set of talents that could let you solve encounters a few different ways.
Done. I didn’t even know they allowed votes, does this influence their decisions?
I assume other realities of securing licensing, etc, are bigger factors, but from what they’ve said, they pursue big vote-getters more energetically!
Well, it’s a no-brainer to grab Shadowrun: Dragonfall, since it’s $2 and change at the Humble Store today!
Oh, sorry, it doesn’t! Hehe, I was just listing those games more as a disclaimer of sorts in making a strong case for Anachronox. That is, my taste and enthusiasm for RPGs is a bit weird given how many I tend to ditch!
[quote=“Nightgaunt, post:30, topic:129761, full:true”]Re: Interactive fiction – I feel like most IF is of the “scripted one-off interactions” school, but if there’s anything that’s true about IF it’s that if you can imagine a subgenre, someone out there has tried it at least once!
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Mmmm, some IF nowadays is about stat driven and emergent storytelling (or character interactions) which does approach, I think, your goals of a story focused RPG.
There are crazy experiments out there with (I think) little practical use, but there are also several well framed works and engines that show a lot of potential.
Also interesting to you might be this piece by Emily Short on why the approach might be very difficult to achieve success with (in the sense of having a fun game at the end of the process).
Mass Effect series are kind of RPG-lite. Dunno if I’d recommend them. They’re really corny space opera with bad combat.
I also dunno if I would recommend Age of Decadence. You have to pay really close attention (especially in the beginning!) to what choices you make in dialogues and when choosing what stats to raise. You really need to specialize in either a talky role or a fighter role. A generalist “jack of all trades” character is not going to perform well in this game. Also, the ending is kind of abrupt, which left me scratching my head.
I do! Almost any RPG I play these days I try to play with as little combat as possible unless it’s clearly not built that way (eg most JRPGs). I greatly prefer RPGS and even action adventure games which allow you to talk or skill or puzzle or explore your way out of combat situations, and I’m always disappointed when a situation that seems like it should be a story beat or a skill check devolves into unavoidable combat.
It seems to me the Deus Ex/Dishonoured games come closest to what you’re describing in mainstream gaming, but maybe they’re not RPG enough.
Thanks for sharing that Emily Short article, Juan. Very smart. The models I have in mind for puzzle solving are only so far along the spectrum toward truly emergent, but a lot of what she says seems true about focusing on physical puzzles and simplistic character behaviors.
I snagged a game called “Kim” on sale on GOG and it is definitely a lite RPG. It’s got a novel setting, too: It’s based off of Rudyard Kipling’s India. It’s got what I find to be a very charming top-down viewpoint, and some great writing. I mostly did a lot of running around and talking to everyone in my first game, but there’s some form of fighting and sneaking and stealing possible.
Heh, my thoughts, exactly. I think maybe “Combat-Lite RPG” would have been a better descriptor.
I can’t think of Persona as a “Lite RPG”, either - half the game IS combat. Plus, there is demon-fusion, the social or dating-sim aspect, lots of story… not a LITE RPG in any way.
Fable II could be a called Lite RPG but it also has a lot of combat, though most of it pretty simple.