Things are coming along. I've got the theme of the artwork down now and have begun cranking out my tiles and character sprites. If people are interested, I can post some early work in a week or so. -Verxion
If its not too late, I have a couple of ideas. Now, keep in mind I haven't played a ton of JRPGs, but I've played some, and I've played a lot of more "western" RPGs including some tactical. Lately, I've been more into JRPGs (completing Chaos Rings recently and I'm about halfway through FF1 right now on iPhone). So, here are some ideas I've been thinking of - have no idea how they would work in practice: 1) I actually like longer battles with enemies of a similar level but have them be more strategic, and to account for the increased length of the battles, make them provide more treasure, experience, or whatever other rewards. With a longer battle you could get more into spells for certain party members that perhaps take several turns to go off, and with the stronger spells that require a lot of concentration, perhaps enemies that successfully attack your spell casters can break their concentration, forcing them to start over, or their spell goes off early and with much less effect. So then you have to select one or more characters to defend your spell caster, but while defending that character can't attack himself. 2) With longer battles, in some enemy groups you could be fighting a somewhat intelligent group of baddies too, so that they could be doing similar things to you (setting up a nice powerful spell over the course of a few combat turns and having a mob or two acting as guards). 3) I'm not into grinding. I do like to have additional combat outside of the main storyline, but I don't like having to go back and grind mobs just to make it through the next boss. So long as I follow the primary questline and not be a stupid player then I should be prepared enough to tackle the next major boss without having to grind. There are several ways to help prevent grinding and to help encourage fights with enemies at your party's level - some of them (such as giving you a lot less reward) still results in you wasting your time fighting them to begin with (my opinion). I like the idea that if you are super powerful (in relation to a weaker group of monsters) well, then, they aren't dumb - they remembered when you waltzed through their territory and destroyed a bunch of them before - why would they attack you now? I should be able to backtrack through an area without even worrying about the weak monsters attacking me. And if they are only slightly weaker than me then they should attack me in greater numbers as least - make it some kind of a challenge. 3) Not every fight should be a cake walk - challenges are good. Leveling up should encourage fighting monsters around the same level (or slightly higher) than you for maximum rewards. And in addition to some fights being against a single powerful enemy, there is also great fun to be had in fighting a large group of weaker monsters. That's where nuke spells are fun 4) Back to the longer turned based battles I referenced above - more strategy that emerges from longer battles in the form of spells, or powers such as poisons, DoT's (damage over time), "crowd control" (getting the enemy to fight who you want to fight). My problem with most JRPGs I've played so far seem really to last a very short amount of time and thus lead to very uninteresting combats. 5) Even with the typical Final Fantasy / JRPG system where you have two separate sides, I really hate that I can't keep my mages or clerics out of harm's way. I mean, if I had a group I really would have that much trouble keeping my mage or cleric behind my big huge armored fighter? Especially if I told the fighter not to do anything but to keep his shield out and keep the mage out of danger? Really? This still means that a monster can somehow sneak around and attack my mage? Give me meaningful choices in combat - I can either elect to have my fighter NOT attack at all and keep my mage out of trouble (except from some area of effect spell) or I can have my fighter go on the offensive but now my mage isn't covered. And yeah, there should be ways for the monsters to still somehow get around my defending fighter or knock him out somehow, but it should really be tough. Kind of reminds me of football somewhat - keeping your QB safe while you try to run a play... I guess my general take is - less actual number of fights, but make them last longer and be more important. Longer should equal more depth, otherwise having a large number of real short battles turns the whole exercise into more or less a resource management game and less than something tactical. Anyway - just my thoughts... best of luck to you in your new rpg!
