u/SappyTheSableye

(===>SOME<===) people believe that JRPG combat is boring and dumb; that your characters just sit there and have to take attacks

and that things like Action Commands are the best and most innovative thing ever and that JRPGs that do it are rhe best thing since sliced bread

Now I'm a diehard UTDR megafan, so clearly I'm not against this as a concept; it can be very fun and engaging

But I do not personally agree with that sentiment at ALL lmfao

I think all a JRPG needs to have good combat is a sense of kinetictiveness and interactivity. Hence my two personal examples: Mother3 and Xenoblade Chronicles (my BELOVEDS)

Mother3 is a textbook turn-based JRPG, and whilst it has inspired many creators for its comedy and emotional sincerity (my included)

The thing that I actually love the most about it is its combat system. Mainly the rolling HP meter and the Rhythmn combos

In most JRPGs, damage is instant, but in Mother 3, your HP rolls down over time. If a character takes lethal damage, you still have a short chance to heal them before the counter reaches zero (it doesnt matter how much damage they take. All you have to do is heal them before they collapse)

Mother3's rhythm combos let you time normal attacks to the music. If you keep hitting the beat, you can chain extra hits, up to 16 total. Different battle songs have different rhythms, and every character and enemy has their own hit and miss sounds

These mechanics make the combat feel more active and kinetic even if you're just standing there. You're constantly scrolling through menus, optimizing who holds what due to character speeds, and if you're actually paying attention you can squeeze that extra bit of damage out of a boss with Rhythm Combos

Honestly it's absurd more indie rpgs haven't stolen its combat system lol

And for Xenoblade Chronicles I just really like its MMORPG-like combat system. You're naturally autoattacking alot, which makes it feel like an ongoing battle

But you also have to pay attention to the commands/skills you use in battle. As depending on when/how theyre used, they can have a variety of effects

Like Shulk's backlash, which deal bonus damage if you use it behind an enemy (duh)

But you also have to be careful because if you start swinging like a maniac and spamming your strongest skills, then you wont be able to synergize well with your party members (which is VERY important for things like Topple Stacking)

And if you draw too much aggro? Guess who becomes the main target for the enemy to focus on?

This sense of push&pulls anticipation made me locked in for every battle. I cant wait to play the other installments of the series ^^

Okay so like spoilers for Night In The Woods and Fall of Porcupine if you even care (I ADORE the former despite its flaws, the latter too to a lesser extent)

So I've finished Fall of Porcupine and wow what a game. Compared to Night In The Woods I feel like its ending was better, but it ran into the same pitfalls as NITW

That is to say they are both very character-focused, but steer hard into what I like to call "Deep Plot Stuff" territory in the last stretch of the game, and then end very abruptly in an open-ended manner

>The Possum Springs cult in NITW >The mass sickness in Porcupine and the hospital being shady due to Theobald being blackmailed in FOP

Can I just say I lowkey hate when a character-focused story suddenly becomes plot heavy, yet decides to not even address said Plot?

I'm perfectly fine coming to my own conclusions and not getting all the answers to a story; I care less about "the lore" of a fake world and more about the characters

But it's these pivots to Deep Plot Stuff that ends up taking away from the characters, and the anticlimax of said Plot Stuff makes it seem like "Okay why did we even do it then???"

Like NOBODYYYYYY forced you to make the stakes that high gang 😭

NITW's hurts me so badly because the series is literally made for me. From the writing, the artstyle, the sense of exploitation/lived in world, the music oh my lord the MUSIC (it's peak)

And Mae's entire character is perfect for me. She's flawed and allowed to be unlikable but deeply relatable. And her relationship with her family and friends is sooo good, I really felt for her when she was venting about her struggles with mental health and self worth

AND THEN HERE COMES THE PLOT WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!

BOOM there's an oldhead cult in Possum Springs that is the reason Casey is missing/dead and people are going missing

who is Casey you may ask? Oh yeah it's the guy that was missing when Mae got here

Now does the game actually do anything with the fact that Casey is gone? Develop who he was as a person? Give us any reason to even SLIGHTLY care about this cult plotline? Make us care about him, like, at ALL?

No! It doesn't!!!!

Gregg is my favorite character in NITW. But when he was crashing out over the cult killing Casey for being worthless to society, I just felt nothing because I dont CARE about Casey. And he's the only emotional connection we even have to this damn cult plotline

These are a bunch of faceless crazy oldhead mooks that we don't know and don't care about because they're written in such a way that anyone who even has a slight conscious would hate them

Like yeah man I don't think people should be sacrificed to The Hole just because they "don't serve a purpose in society", these guys still suck and bring down the story's quality 👍

Plus there's such thing as bad open-ended. And:

>Who was Casey and what is up with this Possum Springs Cult

>The entire town becoming sick after complaining about the hospital being poorly run

Are those things

Fall of Porcupine is even more frustrating than NITW, and is the entire reason this rant post even exists

Because at LEAST you can make a ThemesAndSuch argument for the cult in NITW; they parralel Mae in that they are people who were promised a future that they couldn't get cuz their lives were rigged (capitalism/industrialization with the oldheads, mental health with Mae)

I STILL hate it and think it ruins a perfect game, but you can make that argument!

FOP on the other hand has an empty net with no goalie and somehow, SOMEHOW by God's grace manages to miss and score into its own goal

The series had the perfect escalation of the themes of medical care and the health industry with Irma's death. With multiple people getting (understandably) riled up and wanting answers, even if it was done by bad actors like Ralph

That even if our cast is good hearted and genuinely want to help people, the systems at play incentives profit over care. If the hospital wasn't so run down, and that leak never happened, Irma COULD have recovered and still been alive

That's so cool! And complex! And genuinely interesting because both sides have understandable grievances about their healthcare

Too bad none of that matters because all the protestors randomly get sick and need to be hospitalized enmasse!

I THINK it was food poisoning from the soup of the Hibernation Festival, that was something I naturally inferred based off of the fact that Finely said the fountain water was stale. I remember Finley and Co. Didn't really get to eat any Soup

(and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that eating soup made of fountain water that comes out of century old pipes MIGHT be contaminated!)

But then that begs the question of how come the effects only started kicking in NOW? And how come all these super smart doctors NEVER came to the conclusion that it was food poisoning? Finley and company don't even feel the need to mention the Hibernation Festival soup as a potential cause? Hello??

Why are they treating this like it's some mysterious virus contagen? Bro this isn't the Rosalia Virus from Trauma Team, this is FOOD POISONINGGGG

WHERE DID EVERYONE'S BRAINS GO????

And wouldn't there have been alot more of the people we know infected?

That would've certainly made the ending more personal rather than taking care of Faceless Mob #247

And if they were just going to evacuate people to the gym because the 5th floor randomly caught on fire, then couldn't they have done that in the first place???

The only reason we even went to the 5th floor is because the the hospital was running out of space and would start denying people if need be. If that were the case, we could've JUST used the gym in the first place and avoided this whole mess

"But Karl said it was like a whole protocol thing for if the building catches fire"

Bro.

It's a Mass Food Poisoning situation in the town, and they're running out of space.

I dont think the school would care about technicalities right nkw.

Especially if their own students, who WERE present for the Hibernation Festival like Larissa btw, were critically ill as well

Normally stuff like this would just be nerd crap I don't care about, some "Boy I sure hope someone got fired for THAT blunder!" type stuff

but BECAUSE the characters I care about are TIED to said nerd crap, I have to think critically and more indepth about the logistics

Not to mention that Gregor, the janitor/general handyman of the hospital, just dissappears??

Like during Irma's funeral he was hiding in the back because he felt such immense guilt for the hospital being run down and The Leak happening. That if he had been better at his job, Irma could've still been alive to this day. He could feel everyone starinf at and judging him, so he hides in the back of the bar

A small bit of characterization and sympathy for a character who has been written to be very abrasive up to this point, and I really liked that

Too bad he just dissappears! Into thin air!

Like not even something small like "I'll try my best to repair this keep this hospital running" or "I'll make sure the School Gym has ample cooling and electricity"

Nope, just vanishes into thin air!

And Theobald infodumping about being blackmailed before sacrificing himself just felt hollow to me cuz I knew he was gonna die. He had done nothing for most of the story, he was either super turbo evil and caused said mass infection, or was going to die

I liked Fall of Porcupine. And I feel like it does the "repetitive gameplay to passby life" mechanics better than NITW (because you're a doctor, of course you'll do checkups every day consistently)

I just felt like the ending left alot to be desired just like NITW

Which is funny cuz FOP is clearly inspired by that game

I dunno man it just really frustrates me when a story makes up a dragon for the narrative to slay, when they already have a perfectly fine dragon right there (St Ursula in FOP, and Mae's poor mental health and lack of purpose in NITW)

(Discussion) What are some JRPGs with genuinely engaging combat to you like that don't involve Action Commands (dodging, QTEs, parries)? And why do you like them?

I hate when character-driven stories suddenly decide they need Deep Plot Stuff in the final act