I think that you've really got to split up your strategy games (he did kinda touch on this but at the same sorta glosses over it). Tactics/turn based/RTS/simulator/builder/sandbox are all VERY...
I think that you've really got to split up your strategy games (he did kinda touch on this but at the same sorta glosses over it).
Tactics/turn based/RTS/simulator/builder/sandbox are all VERY different genre's with their own subgenres and what not. XCOM is WILDLY different from every other game he mentioned (which to be fair is annoying because no one seems to want to try and make what made the new xcom great, especially with Long war, but I digress).
I personally get annoyed with RTS for a few reasons.
The main one is that the REAL gameplay is an attention splitting challenge, but also that there's just a lot of forcing the game to do the obvious thing in 90% of cases because in some edge case you're going to want to do the 10% thing (and yes I get this is where a lot of the real depth lies).
I've always kept an eye on RTS games that try to abstract out some of the busywork, and they've all met with mixed success. Tooth and Tail was something that looked like it was heading in my direction, and I'd kill for someone to try and remake the old WC3 maps like Tech Wars or Boreal Conflict which are basically just the macro half of an RTS.
Overall this does feel like saying "I don't like sandwiches".
Clearly he likes SOME strategy games, but I also get the vibe he hasn't actually had a good list for him. Some of that is, justifiably, because there's just a giant hole in the market in some of the spots he enjoys.
Is it really that different to Fire Emblem? Especially if you play Fire Emblem with character death on
. XCOM is WILDLY different from every other game he mentioned (which to be fair is annoying because no one seems to want to try and make what made the new xcom great, especially with Long war, but I digress).
Is it really that different to Fire Emblem? Especially if you play Fire Emblem with character death on
The fact that in Modern Fire Emblem there's an option to turn off character deaths but not to skip playing the tea party game if you want to max out effectiveness is what kills me. I like the...
The fact that in Modern Fire Emblem there's an option to turn off character deaths but not to skip playing the tea party game if you want to max out effectiveness is what kills me. I like the older ones because, though there's still character growth, the bonds between your units grow in combat, not because you asked them about hunky guards.
It's a tough divide. From a meta sense, some characters simply underfunction in combat, but are otherwise engaging characters to learn about. Needing to alter your tactics to keep a knight close...
It's a tough divide. From a meta sense, some characters simply underfunction in combat, but are otherwise engaging characters to learn about. Needing to alter your tactics to keep a knight close to a cavalier so you can get 10 lines of lore is inconvinient in multiple ways.
Streamlining supports as an out of battle mechanic solves almost all those problems. Only sacrificing a bit of flow from the older games that just go map to map. It's pretty quick to skip support conversations you don't care about anyway.
Absolutely. A lot of the fun of xcom is using different combined with the way the world is laid out and the enemies move to solve a situation, especially with your character loadout. I like FE,...
Absolutely.
A lot of the fun of xcom is using different combined with the way the world is laid out and the enemies move to solve a situation, especially with your character loadout.
I like FE, but it's more about building specific characters in a few variety of ways, and absolutely doesn't have the depth that xcom has in how you handle an engagement. Breaching through a wall by punching through it with your mech while your flying sniper picks off the enemies as they run around is WAAAAAAY different.
Huh. I guess this is pretty close to how I feel, too. I have known I have disliked RTS games for a very long time, and while I know that in theory I like strategy games, I rarely ever actually...
Huh. I guess this is pretty close to how I feel, too. I have known I have disliked RTS games for a very long time, and while I know that in theory I like strategy games, I rarely ever actually play them. But I think the thing that makes strategy games boring to me is that they tend to be repetitious.
My experience with RTS games were that I really loved them when I was young, but then I realized for every game I would play it was a matter of learning the one strategy to win every game and then getting bored of it. Some games introduced variations of strategy needed, but they tended to introduce them so slowly that I would actually get frustrated with the changes.
This doesn't only apply to RTS games, though; the same thing was often true of turn-based games. My childhood game of choice was Shining Force, and that's a game series that I still enjoy revisiting from time to time. They don't make those games anymore, but there is an even longer living franchise that is much more popular and getting regular new releases - Fire Emblem. And my god, does playing those games feel like such a step backwards. When I played the first English released game for the GBA, it was fine; it was basically a slightly nicer version of Advance Wars (which I would not play for years later), just with unique characters and permadeath. But then I played the second GBA game and it couldn't grab my interest, because it was more or less the exact same game. Years later I picked up a copy of one of the Wii FE games, and once again it was the exact same game. While I understand the later games have more to them, I haven't bothered to get them because the previous releases burned me out completely to the franchise.
Why did Shining Force manage to grab me when Fire Emblem repels me? I do think that it's partly to do with the discovery aspect that Yahtzee mentions, it's probably more to do with the fact that it gives you much more agency in discovering things. A battle in Shining Force is going to be pretty simelar to Fire Emblem, but the execution really makes it special. Between those battles, you're in a regular RPG town. You interact with characters who are more than just cardboard cutouts overlayed on a background; they take up space in the world and they have relatively detailed sprites that the creators spent a lot of time adding emotive animations to make them seem real. You've got towns to go out and explore to find secrets on your own and talk to characters that make the world feel alive. Shining Force 3 takes it to the next level by introducing politics into the mix; the things that happen in the story actually effect the people who live in the world.
But the thing is that there are only about a dozen strategy games that even attempt to do what Shining Force does, and that is inclusive of the 5 mainline Shining Force games. Pretty much every other game like it has been lost from the public psyche, mainly because they never managed to get popular enough. And the lack of engagement I have with the games that are more like Fire Emblem really bums me out because there are some legendary games that I know I am missing out on because of it, like Utawarerumono.
Outside of the fantasy Strategy RPG segment, there are strategy games that have done a fantastic job of drawing me in. Sting has a number of them (Knights in the Nightmare, Yggdra Union, etc.), and there are unique one offs like Into the Rift or Shoot Range. And you know what? I love those games quite a lot, but I have never finished any of them. They all give me the exact same burnout that I get from Fire Emblem and the like. Sting's games in particular are soooo close to getting me, but I can't stick with them no matter how much I try. Though to be fair, me not finishing a game does not necessarily mean that it is not enjoyable - I actually don't finish playing most games. I play for fun after all.
Him musing that he may dislike Fire Emblem because it doesn't have fog of war on every map is a very funny idea to me. It's for free the most complained about part of the games that have it, and I...
Him musing that he may dislike Fire Emblem because it doesn't have fog of war on every map is a very funny idea to me. It's for free the most complained about part of the games that have it, and I can't think of easier way to alienate the entire fanbase than making a game that did have it on every map.
It might not be just that, I think he's just thinking out loud about why he doesn't care for the series. I feel the same, but I don't think it's Fog of War for me. I do generally like strategy...
It might not be just that, I think he's just thinking out loud about why he doesn't care for the series.
I feel the same, but I don't think it's Fog of War for me. I do generally like strategy games, but every Fire Emblem game I've played bores me to tears and I think that may have something to do with all the dialogue; theoretically I should love the fact that I'm taking characters and building them up from battle to battle, as I adore XCOM 1/2, but I just find everything about the series so boring. Again, weird because I Advance Wars is one of my favorite series and I've put many hours into the first Shining Force.
I feel like I should love Fire Emblem, but I just never make it very far in any of them.
Yeah, I get that. Fire Emblem is the only game where I've actively skipped dialogue because it's so inconsequential in regards to the gameplay most of the time, and there's a big disconnect...
Yeah, I get that. Fire Emblem is the only game where I've actively skipped dialogue because it's so inconsequential in regards to the gameplay most of the time, and there's a big disconnect between the icon on the map that represents them and the character in dialogue sequences. Especially when a character is portrayed as shy, kind-hearted, gentle, or anything like that when in battle they are killing people left and right.
Utawarerumono is kind of interesting because it has the opposite problem for me. It comes from a lineage of ADV games (visual novels) but has turn based strategy combat built on top of it, and so it tends to feel like the gameplay gets in the way of the story. In Fire Emblem, I only care about my units dying because of permadeath. In Utawarerumono, I care about my units dying because they're not just units; they all have unique personalities that the game spends a lot of time and effort building before you ever see them in combat. Shining Force does this too, but to a much lesser extent.
(I really need to play XCOM one of these days. I think I have it in my library but something about it beyond my understanding repels me.)
I have not played FE games since the GBA days, but from what I recall, FE games are built around knowing what enemies you are going to encounter several turns in advance and how you can use the...
I have not played FE games since the GBA days, but from what I recall, FE games are built around knowing what enemies you are going to encounter several turns in advance and how you can use the preset environment to deal with them. You get face to face with groups of enemies so you need to balance positioning with how many units to use, etc. You also need to plan a route through the map in advance to get to the boss, treasures, etc. Fog of war maps do not really change any of this, instead they make you work a bit harder to maintain battlefield visibility. You still know the layout, and if you lose, you know you will face the same enemies in the same places next time.
XCom games are not like this at all. The environment is procedurally generated and you encounter less enemies, usually one at a time. You need to explore to find your objectives, being careful not to put your units in danger. The game is about dealing with unknowns and being ready for them.
I enjoy both FE and XCOM series but I kind of agree with Yahtzee in that XCOM is much more enjoyable. In an FE map there might be 3-4 encounters that are actually dangerous and need thought, with 10-15 less dangerous cannon fodder units. They can still mess you up, or leave you too weak to fight the dangerous encounters, but they are less rewarding. In XCOM you are always in "dangerous encounter" mode, even with no enemies on sight.
Which is funny because FOW is pretty trivial on most of the games that have it if you just use the tools they provide. Torches make it basically the same as playing without FOW if you use them right.
Which is funny because FOW is pretty trivial on most of the games that have it if you just use the tools they provide. Torches make it basically the same as playing without FOW if you use them right.
Side-note but I remember Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation and only recently learned of Fully Ramblomatic. It feels so off to hear him speak at a normal speed that I watched this video at x1.25 speed.
Side-note but I remember Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation and only recently learned of Fully Ramblomatic. It feels so off to hear him speak at a normal speed that I watched this video at x1.25 speed.
For even more normal-sounding Yahtzee, he has an incredible series of dev diaries back at the Escapist where he forces himself to make 12 games in 12 months. Parts of what he learned from those...
For even more normal-sounding Yahtzee, he has an incredible series of dev diaries back at the Escapist where he forces himself to make 12 games in 12 months. Parts of what he learned from those were folded into Starstruck Vagabond. Each episode averages around 8 minutes without stereotypical Youtuber filler.
Equally entertaining and an insightful peek into how he thinks with regards to game design and made me appreciate his ramblings even more. Even as a hobbyist dev I've picked up a thing or two from his series with regards to nailing down core game loops at least.
Tactics/turn based/RTS/simulator/builder/sandbox are all VERY different genre's with their own subgenres and what not. XCOM is WILDLY different from every other game he mentioned (which to be fair is annoying because no one seems to want to try and make what made the new xcom great, especially with Long war, but I digress).
The main one is that the REAL gameplay is an attention splitting challenge, but also that there's just a lot of forcing the game to do the obvious thing in 90% of cases because in some edge case you're going to want to do the 10% thing (and yes I get this is where a lot of the real depth lies).
I've always kept an eye on RTS games that try to abstract out some of the busywork, and they've all met with mixed success. Tooth and Tail was something that looked like it was heading in my direction, and I'd kill for someone to try and remake the old WC3 maps like Tech Wars or Boreal Conflict which are basically just the macro half of an RTS.
Clearly he likes SOME strategy games, but I also get the vibe he hasn't actually had a good list for him. Some of that is, justifiably, because there's just a giant hole in the market in some of the spots he enjoys.
The market's options for XCOM like games being XCOM and the Mario Rabbids games (which I love) is both fucked up, but also really funny.
Is it really that different to Fire Emblem? Especially if you play Fire Emblem with character death on
The fact that in Modern Fire Emblem there's an option to turn off character deaths but not to skip playing the tea party game if you want to max out effectiveness is what kills me. I like the older ones because, though there's still character growth, the bonds between your units grow in combat, not because you asked them about hunky guards.
It's a tough divide. From a meta sense, some characters simply underfunction in combat, but are otherwise engaging characters to learn about. Needing to alter your tactics to keep a knight close to a cavalier so you can get 10 lines of lore is inconvinient in multiple ways.
Streamlining supports as an out of battle mechanic solves almost all those problems. Only sacrificing a bit of flow from the older games that just go map to map. It's pretty quick to skip support conversations you don't care about anyway.
Absolutely.
A lot of the fun of xcom is using different combined with the way the world is laid out and the enemies move to solve a situation, especially with your character loadout.
I like FE, but it's more about building specific characters in a few variety of ways, and absolutely doesn't have the depth that xcom has in how you handle an engagement. Breaching through a wall by punching through it with your mech while your flying sniper picks off the enemies as they run around is WAAAAAAY different.
I always liked Valkyria Chronicles as a strategy series. Reminds me of Xcom.
Huh. I guess this is pretty close to how I feel, too. I have known I have disliked RTS games for a very long time, and while I know that in theory I like strategy games, I rarely ever actually play them. But I think the thing that makes strategy games boring to me is that they tend to be repetitious.
My experience with RTS games were that I really loved them when I was young, but then I realized for every game I would play it was a matter of learning the one strategy to win every game and then getting bored of it. Some games introduced variations of strategy needed, but they tended to introduce them so slowly that I would actually get frustrated with the changes.
This doesn't only apply to RTS games, though; the same thing was often true of turn-based games. My childhood game of choice was Shining Force, and that's a game series that I still enjoy revisiting from time to time. They don't make those games anymore, but there is an even longer living franchise that is much more popular and getting regular new releases - Fire Emblem. And my god, does playing those games feel like such a step backwards. When I played the first English released game for the GBA, it was fine; it was basically a slightly nicer version of Advance Wars (which I would not play for years later), just with unique characters and permadeath. But then I played the second GBA game and it couldn't grab my interest, because it was more or less the exact same game. Years later I picked up a copy of one of the Wii FE games, and once again it was the exact same game. While I understand the later games have more to them, I haven't bothered to get them because the previous releases burned me out completely to the franchise.
Why did Shining Force manage to grab me when Fire Emblem repels me? I do think that it's partly to do with the discovery aspect that Yahtzee mentions, it's probably more to do with the fact that it gives you much more agency in discovering things. A battle in Shining Force is going to be pretty simelar to Fire Emblem, but the execution really makes it special. Between those battles, you're in a regular RPG town. You interact with characters who are more than just cardboard cutouts overlayed on a background; they take up space in the world and they have relatively detailed sprites that the creators spent a lot of time adding emotive animations to make them seem real. You've got towns to go out and explore to find secrets on your own and talk to characters that make the world feel alive. Shining Force 3 takes it to the next level by introducing politics into the mix; the things that happen in the story actually effect the people who live in the world.
But the thing is that there are only about a dozen strategy games that even attempt to do what Shining Force does, and that is inclusive of the 5 mainline Shining Force games. Pretty much every other game like it has been lost from the public psyche, mainly because they never managed to get popular enough. And the lack of engagement I have with the games that are more like Fire Emblem really bums me out because there are some legendary games that I know I am missing out on because of it, like Utawarerumono.
Outside of the fantasy Strategy RPG segment, there are strategy games that have done a fantastic job of drawing me in. Sting has a number of them (Knights in the Nightmare, Yggdra Union, etc.), and there are unique one offs like Into the Rift or Shoot Range. And you know what? I love those games quite a lot, but I have never finished any of them. They all give me the exact same burnout that I get from Fire Emblem and the like. Sting's games in particular are soooo close to getting me, but I can't stick with them no matter how much I try. Though to be fair, me not finishing a game does not necessarily mean that it is not enjoyable - I actually don't finish playing most games. I play for fun after all.
Him musing that he may dislike Fire Emblem because it doesn't have fog of war on every map is a very funny idea to me. It's for free the most complained about part of the games that have it, and I can't think of easier way to alienate the entire fanbase than making a game that did have it on every map.
It might not be just that, I think he's just thinking out loud about why he doesn't care for the series.
I feel the same, but I don't think it's Fog of War for me. I do generally like strategy games, but every Fire Emblem game I've played bores me to tears and I think that may have something to do with all the dialogue; theoretically I should love the fact that I'm taking characters and building them up from battle to battle, as I adore XCOM 1/2, but I just find everything about the series so boring. Again, weird because I Advance Wars is one of my favorite series and I've put many hours into the first Shining Force.
I feel like I should love Fire Emblem, but I just never make it very far in any of them.
Yeah, I get that. Fire Emblem is the only game where I've actively skipped dialogue because it's so inconsequential in regards to the gameplay most of the time, and there's a big disconnect between the icon on the map that represents them and the character in dialogue sequences. Especially when a character is portrayed as shy, kind-hearted, gentle, or anything like that when in battle they are killing people left and right.
Utawarerumono is kind of interesting because it has the opposite problem for me. It comes from a lineage of ADV games (visual novels) but has turn based strategy combat built on top of it, and so it tends to feel like the gameplay gets in the way of the story. In Fire Emblem, I only care about my units dying because of permadeath. In Utawarerumono, I care about my units dying because they're not just units; they all have unique personalities that the game spends a lot of time and effort building before you ever see them in combat. Shining Force does this too, but to a much lesser extent.
(I really need to play XCOM one of these days. I think I have it in my library but something about it beyond my understanding repels me.)
I have not played FE games since the GBA days, but from what I recall, FE games are built around knowing what enemies you are going to encounter several turns in advance and how you can use the preset environment to deal with them. You get face to face with groups of enemies so you need to balance positioning with how many units to use, etc. You also need to plan a route through the map in advance to get to the boss, treasures, etc. Fog of war maps do not really change any of this, instead they make you work a bit harder to maintain battlefield visibility. You still know the layout, and if you lose, you know you will face the same enemies in the same places next time.
XCom games are not like this at all. The environment is procedurally generated and you encounter less enemies, usually one at a time. You need to explore to find your objectives, being careful not to put your units in danger. The game is about dealing with unknowns and being ready for them.
I enjoy both FE and XCOM series but I kind of agree with Yahtzee in that XCOM is much more enjoyable. In an FE map there might be 3-4 encounters that are actually dangerous and need thought, with 10-15 less dangerous cannon fodder units. They can still mess you up, or leave you too weak to fight the dangerous encounters, but they are less rewarding. In XCOM you are always in "dangerous encounter" mode, even with no enemies on sight.
Which is funny because FOW is pretty trivial on most of the games that have it if you just use the tools they provide. Torches make it basically the same as playing without FOW if you use them right.
Well, Binding Blade found other ways to keep it annoying.
To be fair one of the ones I haven't played other than a short foray into it when I discovered the series.
Fog of war on a desert map, in the most wyvern heavy game.
Side-note but I remember Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation and only recently learned of Fully Ramblomatic. It feels so off to hear him speak at a normal speed that I watched this video at x1.25 speed.
For even more normal-sounding Yahtzee, he has an incredible series of dev diaries back at the Escapist where he forces himself to make 12 games in 12 months. Parts of what he learned from those were folded into Starstruck Vagabond. Each episode averages around 8 minutes without stereotypical Youtuber filler.
Equally entertaining and an insightful peek into how he thinks with regards to game design and made me appreciate his ramblings even more. Even as a hobbyist dev I've picked up a thing or two from his series with regards to nailing down core game loops at least.
Thanks for the recommend! As an indie dev myself, I'll be sure to check it out! :)
FYI he speaks at ZP speed for Fully Ramblomatic. This video is Semi- Ramblomatic, a companion series much like what Extra Punctuation was.