Why wasn't Kingdom of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?

[infinity_turtles]

So you either play a character that blocks and attacks or a character that just attacks with no need to block

Yeah, you're simplifying things too much. Even for tankier characters you can't just tank every attack. Some things must be blocked or dodged. Some thing must be dodged.(Some of Kalameet's attacks comes to mind) A lot of the better players rely primarily on dodging, which if you can do it is just flat out better(but again, requires more skill). There's a good deal of variety in the builds. Blocking is very good, yes, and most characters can do it, primarily due to the fact that most characters take lots of endurance. (Funny how putty up a solid chunk of material between you and an enemy works for anyone with a good deal of stamina to hold it in place.) But then by the same nature, every build in Amalur can make great use of dodging. Even the tanky warrior dodges all the goddamn time and it's the most efficient thing to do in Amalur regardless of build, with very forgiving timings(It's very rare for there to be a situation where dodging too early is even a thing). Dark Souls is a slower methodical game and you don't like that. That's fine, but stop acting like it's some sort of objective bad. It's well polished and has managed to maintain a strong community for over two years. It's clearly not as one dimensional as you're making it out to be.

Abilities/skills are the heart of an RPG that yields the many different playstyles; look at any other RPG like KoA, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Dragon's Dogma, Borderlands, Mass Effect, and many more, it's the abilities and skills that differentiate characters, Dark Souls doesn't have that. Dark Souls is way too much just about stats going up (upping your Str/Dex) or leveling up your weapon, you aren't earning new abilities or skills. Magic is really the game's only new abilities to learn.

Dark Souls isn't just an RPG, it's an Action RPG. The things that differentiate characters in Dark Souls isn't their abilities. It's how you use them. The game gives you most of your tools from the get-go, which you can trade in for other tools, and while they can be refined, advancing through the game is mostly about smart use of said tools. Again, it's a more methodical game. Just because your preferred type of combat is ability focused doesn't somehow make Dark Souls combat bad, it means it's not your preference.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

this is taken from the wiki you just linked:

Another difference is that their attacks cannot be used to activate Witch Time normally, regardless of difficulty, making them a much more challenging enemy to face. (using a Counter with the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa will activate Witch Time as normal, however)

you can still activate Witch Time just not normally.

I forgot about the Moon accessory, which does require a perfect parry to activate Witch Time. Also, the poster I was replying to said you could dodge Gracious and Glorious to activate Witch Time, which you can't.

Yeah, you're simplifying things too much. Even for tankier characters you can't just tank every attack. Some things must be blocked or dodged. Some thing must be dodged.(Some of Kalameet's attacks comes to mind) A lot of the better players rely primarily on dodging, which if you can do it is just flat out better(but again, requires more skill). There's a good deal of variety in the builds. Blocking is very good, yes, and most characters can do it, primarily due to the fact that most characters take lots of endurance. (Funny how putty up a solid chunk of material between you and an enemy works for anyone with a good deal of stamina to hold it in place.) But then by the same nature, every build in Amalur can make great use of dodging. Even the tanky warrior dodges all the goddamn time and it's the most efficient thing to do in Amalur regardless of build, with very forgiving timings(It's very rare for there to be a situation where dodging too early is even a thing).

The only things that need to be dodged are really just a few bosses in Dark Souls. There's several enemies that you can dodge too early like the mages you face throughout the game and the Niskaru. I don't even have to go to boss battles because normal enemies in KoA are more different than Dark Souls' normal enemies. I haven't played a Might character but I guess you can dodge just fine as one. But that doesn't take away from the fact that Might and Finesse characters play completely differently. The playstyle should be different. Strength and Dex characters play basically the same with just the Dex characters have a better dodge and Strength characters having a better block, then you have that stupid "ninja flip" ring that allows you to have good armor while having a quick dodge (an even quicker dodge than a Dex build in fact). There's more different playstyles in Bayonetta and everyone plays as the same damn character.

Dark Souls is a slower methodical game and you don't like that. That's fine, but stop acting like it's some sort of objective bad. It's well polished and has managed to maintain a strong community for over two years. It's clearly not as one dimensional as you're making it out to be.

Dark Souls isn't just an RPG, it's an Action RPG. The things that differentiate characters in Dark Souls isn't their abilities. It's how you use them. The game gives you most of your tools from the get-go, which you can trade in for other tools, and while they can be refined, advancing through the game is mostly about smart use of said tools. Again, it's a more methodical game. Just because your preferred type of combat is ability focused doesn't somehow make Dark Souls combat bad, it means it's not your preference.

I like all kinds of games, check my trophies if you want. I played Dark Souls, Valkyria Chronicles (the game doesn't have trophies though), XCOM, and Resonance of Fate and all of them are slower, methodical games. I loved Xenosaga 2's battle system when everyone bitched that it was too slow, then Xenosaga 3 went back to the standard shitty JRPG turn-based systems. Dark Souls just isn't a good RPG nor does it have a good combat system.

The number of people that play a game means nothing to the quality of said game. COD is far from the best FPS. Two and a Half Men is far from a funny show. And, the Transformer movies are far from good movies.

KoA, Skyrim, Borderlands, Mass Effect, Dragon's Dogma and many more RPGs are action RPGs as well. And they all have abilities that totally change the way every build plays, Dark Souls does not. Notice how Dark Souls is completely devoid of characters having different abilities even within it's own genre.

 

[EternallyBored]

I have gotten to the point where combat has become too easy, but I'm pretty much on the homestretch now. The game was more challenging than Dark Souls to me. And, the game has gotten easy due to getting abilities instead of just stat increases. I can dominate enemies because all my abilities not because my stats just went up, which is how most RPGs get too easy (mainly JRPGs).

What you spend the most time doing in a game is the most important part of the game. What you do most in RPGs usually is kill enemies thus combat is the most important part. RPGs SHOULD be about story and characters but 99% of them aren't as they aren't real RPGs as very few video game RPGs have role-playing to begin with. Mass Effect has more time spent role-playing than fighting enemies, which is a great thing (more RPGs should be like that). And even then Mass Effect has great combat (the shooting is solid and the powers make it more than just a TPS), its TPS shooting is better than quite a few actual TPSs (like say Max Payne 3).

There's very few RPGs that actually have good characters and a good story so why are all these people that want good stories and good characters playing video game RPGs? Very few games at all have a good story. Also, most RPGs don't have good combat for the most part either. You can skip over the story and dialog if you like the gameplay but if you like the story and dialog, you can't skip over the bad combat; that's the big difference. RPG players want strategy, which is fine again; however, there's very few RPGs that are strategic either. Skyrim isn't strategic nor does it have a party system either (why are you leveling that against KoA but not Skyrim?). Dragon Age has more strategy then most, but it's nothing special in the strategy department either. Funny thing is that the game probably the closest to DnD combat (at least recently) is actually XCOM, it's basically exactly the DnD combat system but tailored for gun combat; it's completely turn-based and every character has a move action and a standard action just like DnD, and it's actually strategic.

I hope you realize the bad combat systems of RPGs past and present are going by the wayside. Games like KoA, Dragon's Dogma, and Demon's/Dark Souls are ushering in real-time combat that doesn't suck anymore. Fighting a dragon by slashing at its ankles is just boring and bad, Dragon's Dogma showed gamers how dragon fights SHOULD be, not Skyrim or Dragon Age. With Skyrim, Bethesda made the Elder Scrolls series more action oriented, Bioware is making Dragon Age more action oriented (DA2 is a misstep not because it was more action oriented but because the action combat was just poorly done). I have nothing against a slow DnD-esque combat (I play Pathfinder weekly by-the-way) but do something like XCOM to actually give me that type of experience instead of giving me the boring and crappy combat systems of past RPGs that try to be a bit action-y and strategic but fail at both.

You are way too focused on combat, and seem to have trouble differentiating your opinion from what you consider to be facts. You state that story is rarely good in RPGs (a massive opinion as I find quite a few RPGs with good or at least decent stories and worlds), but your exact question in the title is "Why wasn't Kingdoms of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?", but that's the answer right there, Skyrim and Dragons Age have good stories, characters, and worlds, and most people didn't see those things in KoA, thus they don't praise it as much. RPGs are famous as a genre for being forgiving of other mechanics as long as the story is good, or the world interesting in sand box games cases, KoA didn't have those so it wasn't as praised as much, even as fun as you found the combat (more power too you by the way, don't think I'm trying to tell you that you personally shouldn't have fun with it).

The rest of your post is either opinion or incredibly warped interpretation of things. Action RPGs are supplanting other types? Your examples are terrible, KoA was a commercial failure with lukewarm critical reviews, Dragons Dogma also sold modestly, and got slightly better reviews, there might be a sequel in the works but after Capcom announcing they were looking into it there's been no solid word so no guarantees there, the director states in interviews he wants to go back to DMC for his next game, so yeah not exactly setting the world on fire here. Dark/ Demons souls is hardly action combat, most people aren't praising it for how fast and action packed it is, most of the praise I see is for how slow and deliberate the combat is, the combat is somewhat unique and no other series seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

As for Dragons Age your just completely wrong there, Bioware has stated they want to keep combat flashy and exciting, but they are reversing a lot of the stuff that was introduced in DA2 to take it back to tactical combat that was in DA1. Including the removal of enemy waves to improve tactics and placement, and a revamping of the tactical view which basically turns the game into a quasi-turn-based affair. Elder Scrolls has had some flash added to its combat but its hardly changed at all since Morrowind, and won't be changed to anything like KoA since that type of combat is impossible while maintaining a camera in first person.

Again though, your opinion has no effect on the question you posed "why wasn't Kingdoms of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?" Because people don't care about stupid actiony combat in their RPGs as much as you do, so they praise the setting, story, and characters far more than some broken combat system, that since we're being honest, I like games like Bayonetta (great game), but for RPGs I'll take Skyrim's more deliberate combat system over KoA if I'm forced to choose. I can stand Skyrim's combat a lot longer than I tolerated Amalur's, god damn was that stupid system too easy to break, I think I died once in that game on hard and that's because I was trying to watch TV and play at the same time. The combat had potential but its fundamental flaws make me hesitant to call it anything other than a mediocre mess, even it's high points don't mean much with such boring enemies anyway, a good combat system means nothing if the enemies can't push you to use it to its fullest extent.

Skyrim's and Dragon Age's combat have problems, but you seem to assume the answer is to make them more like KoA or just more live action in general, but I don't think that's what fans have in mind when they criticize the combat. The criticism around Skyrim is usually about things like spears being taken out and spells being nerfed, it's not people begging for a dodge roll and a reckoning mode, KoA's combat in Skyrim would just make Skyrim less fun in my opinion.

 

[infinity_turtles]

The only things that need to be dodged are really just a few bosses in Dark Souls. There's several enemies that you can dodge too early like the mages you face throughout the game and the Niskaru. I don't even have to go to boss battles because normal enemies in KoA are more different than Dark Souls' normal enemies. I haven't played a Might character but I guess you can dodge just fine as one. But that doesn't take away from the fact that Might and Finesse characters play completely differently. The playstyle should be different. Strength and Dex characters play basically the same with just the Dex characters have a better dodge and Strength characters having a better block, then you have that stupid "ninja flip" ring that allows you to have good armor while having a quick dodge (an even quicker dodge than a Dex build in fact). There's more different playstyles in Bayonetta and everyone plays as the same damn character.

Having played through Amalur several times... They don't really play that differently. Sorcery does, but Might and Finesse played fundamentally the same. As others have said, dodge attack is pretty standard and gets you through the majority of the game, and the Sorcery lines' inferior blink means you have to do other things. The Fineese line is capable of zoning and kiting, but honestly that just makes things take longer. The Might line is just really straight forward. This is what I'd say if I were arguing like you anyway. There's a lot more depth to it then that, even if the basics are the same with every goddamn character.

Seriously, you've played through Dark Souls once with one character. You've admitted as much. How about you stop proclaiming there's only one play style when you have no idea what changing those stats and equipment around and actually doing different things actually changes about how how you play the game. You're also not even acknowledging just how much differing move-sets of the weapons your options in any given fight. Swing speed, ability to stagger, damage done, reach, recover time, ability to use with a shield, area it covers, damage type, and in some cases special attacks. If every character played the same PvP wouldn't be filled with so many differing builds. There'd be one build that performed best at the one playstyle. That's not the case.

I like all kinds of games, check my trophies if you want. I played Dark Souls, Valkyria Chronicles (the game doesn't have trophies though), XCOM, and Resonance of Fate and all of them are slower, methodical games. I loved Xenosaga 2's battle system when everyone bitched that it was too slow, then Xenosaga 3 went back to the standard shitty JRPG turn-based systems. Dark Souls just isn't a good RPG nor does it have a good combat system.

The number of people that play a game means nothing to the quality of said game. COD is far from the best FPS. Two and a Half Men is far from a funny show. And, the Transformer movies are far from good movies.

KoA, Skyrim, Borderlands, Mass Effect, Dragon's Dogma and many more RPGs are action RPGs as well. And they all have abilities that totally change the way every build plays, Dark Souls does not. Notice how Dark Souls is completely devoid of characters having different abilities even within it's own genre.

You're using turn-based and strategy games as a comparison point for Dark Souls. Shouldn't that perhaps make you question whether maybe you prefer you just prefer action games to be lighter and faster? It's very different from most action games. Also everything you listed includes special abilities in bulk. Actually, most of your argument against Dark Souls is that not having them makes it bad. Maybe you need to realize that not everyone gives a damn about those and not having them doesn't mean low quality but a different style?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

You are way too focused on combat, and seem to have trouble differentiating your opinion from what you consider to be facts. You state that story is rarely good in RPGs (a massive opinion as I find quite a few RPGs with good or at least decent stories and worlds), but your exact question in the title is "Why wasn't Kingdoms of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?", but that's the answer right there, Skyrim and Dragons Age have good stories, characters, and worlds, and most people didn't see those things in KoA, thus they don't praise it as much. RPGs are famous as a genre for being forgiving of other mechanics as long as the story is good, or the world interesting in sand box games cases, KoA didn't have those so it wasn't as praised as much, even as fun as you found the combat (more power too you by the way, don't think I'm trying to tell you that you personally shouldn't have fun with it).

The rest of your post is either opinion or incredibly warped interpretation of things. Action RPGs are supplanting other types? Your examples are terrible, KoA was a commercial failure with lukewarm critical reviews, Dragons Dogma also sold modestly, and got slightly better reviews, there might be a sequel in the works but after Capcom announcing they were looking into it there's been no solid word so no guarantees there, the director states in interviews he wants to go back to DMC for his next game, so yeah not exactly setting the world on fire here. Dark/ Demons souls is hardly action combat, most people aren't praising it for how fast and action packed it is, most of the praise I see is for how slow and deliberate the combat is, the combat is somewhat unique and no other series seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

As for Dragons Age your just completely wrong there, Bioware has stated they want to keep combat flashy and exciting, but they are reversing a lot of the stuff that was introduced in DA2 to take it back to tactical combat that was in DA1. Including the removal of enemy waves to improve tactics and placement, and a revamping of the tactical view which basically turns the game into a quasi-turn-based affair. Elder Scrolls has had some flash added to its combat but its hardly changed at all since Morrowind, and won't be changed to anything like KoA since that type of combat is impossible while maintaining a camera in first person.

Again though, your opinion has no effect on the question you posed "why wasn't Kingdoms of Amalur as praised as Skyrim or Dragon Age?" Because people don't care about stupid actiony combat in their RPGs as much as you do, so they praise the setting, story, and characters far more than some broken combat system, that since we're being honest, I like games like Bayonetta (great game), but for RPGs I'll take Skyrim's more deliberate combat system over KoA if I'm forced to choose. I can stand Skyrim's combat a lot longer than I tolerated Amalur's, god damn was that stupid system too easy to break, I think I died once in that game on hard and that's because I was trying to watch TV and play at the same time. The combat had potential but its fundamental flaws make me hesitant to call it anything other than a mediocre mess, even it's high points don't mean much with such boring enemies anyway, a good combat system means nothing if the enemies can't push you to use it to its fullest extent.

Skyrim's and Dragon Age's combat have problems, but you seem to assume the answer is to make them more like KoA or just more live action in general, but I don't think that's what fans have in mind when they criticize the combat. The criticism around Skyrim is usually about things like spears being taken out and spells being nerfed, it's not people begging for a dodge roll and a reckoning mode, KoA's combat in Skyrim would just make Skyrim less fun in my opinion.

Whatever I spend the most time doing in a game (ANY game), that aspect should be good. If the game is mainly shooting, the shooting better be good; if the game is mainly platforming, the platforming better be good. RPGs force you into combat more than anything else so combat should be good since that's what I'm spending most of my time doing. It's not my fault RPGs do that, combat should take a backseat in most RPGs, they are about the ROLE-PLAYING, not the fighting. You don't even need combat for a game to be an RPG.

The writing in games is so poor across the board, it's not even funny. Bioware stands out, not because they are great writers but because everyone else is so bad. Mass Effect's story isn't very good (even before the ending, which I don't hate like many others), but the characters are good. Bethesda are just horrible writers. A major problem with games isn't just that the medium has very few good writers, it's the way games are developed as well, usually the levels are made first and the writer has to work the story around what is already done. I can go to any other medium for better writing and characters, the average TV show is leagues better than the average video game in terms of story and characters. You have movies, books, comics, etc. as well. I don't game for good stories, I game for gameplay; well, at least until games get better writers. Even the games that get praised for their stories aren't anything special; Nier is OK with 2 good characters, Bioshock has perhaps the worst assassination plot ever, etc. At least Platinum Games knows what they can and can't with regards to writing, they don't try to write serious stories or anything, they basically write games in the style of great B movies; Bayonetta is so cheesy that it's loads of fun. Same thing with Vanquish, it's basically a B movie sci-fi version of Red Dawn with the 2 main characters having a gravely voice competition, then it has perhaps the most absurd and funny instance of the 'reverse polarity' sci-fi trope.

Has there been any gameplay released of the next Dragon's Age yet? It just doesn't sound like it will be much like Origins as they want it to be "flashy and exciting". Didn't Bioware say kinda the same thing with ME3? Yet ME3 was even more fast-paced than ME2. The reason why ME2/3 were good and why DA2 was bad (not the only reason) was because ME2/3 are better TPSs than DA2 is a hack and slash.

I believe fans dislike Skyrim's combat for being clunky, not because of nerfs. People want real-time combat to be smooth and responsive. Also it's not the hugely successive games that change genres, it's the game's that failed but innovated. If it wasn't for Kill.Switch and Winback, we won't have Gears and Uncharted. Metal Gear Online, while being a niche shooter, has caused massive changes in the online shooter genre. Ghost Recon Future Soldier is basically a lite version of Metal Gear Online as it borrowed almost every mechanic from the game. Medal of Honor Warfighter, The Last of Us, and the new Gears have borrowed from Metal Gear Online as well. It's not the games that sell 1 million+ on day 1 that are the innovators. You will see action RPGs borrowing heavily from KoA, Dragon's Dogma, and Demon's/Dark Souls with regards to real-time combat in probably every next iteration of established series. You can see it in The Witcher series already.

Having played through Amalur several times... They don't really play that differently. Sorcery does, but Might and Finesse played fundamentally the same. As others have said, dodge attack is pretty standard and gets you through the majority of the game, and the Sorcery lines' inferior blink means you have to do other things. The Fineese line is capable of zoning and kiting, but honestly that just makes things take longer. The Might line is just really straight forward. This is what I'd say if I were arguing like you anyway. There's a lot more depth to it then that, even if the basics are the same with every goddamn character.

Seriously, you've played through Dark Souls once with one character. You've admitted as much. How about you stop proclaiming there's only one play style when you have no idea what changing those stats and equipment around and actually doing different things actually changes about how how you play the game. You're also not even acknowledging just how much differing move-sets of the weapons your options in any given fight. Swing speed, ability to stagger, damage done, reach, recover time, ability to use with a shield, area it covers, damage type, and in some cases special attacks. If every character played the same PvP wouldn't be filled with so many differing builds. There'd be one build that performed best at the one playstyle. That's not the case.

I can tell just looking through the Might ability tree, the class is way different than Finesse. I'm well versed in RPGs and their systems. You act like you have to try a build to know how it plays. I can look at a Borderland's build and know actually the playstyle of the build without playing it. I can look at a DnD build and know how it plays, it's not hard. There's nothing wrong with Blink because I used it as a rogue for awhile because I went into Sorcery, I only did a respec because I wanted to get some higher tier Finesse abilities like smoke bomb and gambit.

What game doesn't have different swing speed, ability to stagger, damage done, reach, etc. for different weapons? That's a fucking standard, not something Dark Souls did that was new. Dark Souls PvP was so unbalanced because of items that let you do stuff your build shouldn't be able to do (like the poise ring or ninja flip ring). I just searched "best pvp dark souls build" and literally the 10th Google search result contains of post of someone complaining that half the people use a katana, the wolf ring, and havel's gauntlets. Also, the lag is pretty bad with Dark Souls with all the lag backstabs.

You're using turn-based and strategy games as a comparison point for Dark Souls. Shouldn't that perhaps make you question whether maybe you prefer you just prefer action games to be lighter and faster? It's very different from most action games. Also everything you listed includes special abilities in bulk. Actually, most of your argument against Dark Souls is that not having them makes it bad. Maybe you need to realize that not everyone gives a damn about those and not having them doesn't mean low quality but a different style?

I went into Dark Souls knowing its combat was slow. I bought and played the game because I wanted a solid combat system and a hard game, and I got neither. I have no problem with slow games, I love stealth games for example. The problem is Dark Souls combat wasn't very good, not that it was slow. If Dark Souls was a game you played with a set character, it would be a much better game as the only issue I have with the actual controls is that you can't backpedal with your shield up and not locked-on. Secondly, the enemies outside of the bosses don't require different strategies.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

The OP is asking why wasn't Amalur as praised - in other words Amalur should have gotten similar praise precisely because it brought combat to action RPGs in a way that was refreshing. However, what was the first thing that people chose to bag on? The combat. Skyrim's combat was terrible, yet it's one of the most popular games today because people want open world exploration more than combat in their games. That's how I see it.

Amalur was a step forward for action RPGs, but the die-hard RPG fans panned it. That's a huge part of why it's not as popular as Skyrim or Dragon Age. The combat for skyrim (without mods) is objectively terrible, but you can't focus on combat if you want to talk about Skyrim. Dark/Demon's Souls is really a cult followed title that didn't get nearly as much press as Dragon's Dogma or Amalur has gotten. Even if you say that Amalur is terrible, that's still a good thing because people are checking out the game to find out why. Bad press is still press. The fiasco with 38 studios helped bring more attention to Amalur too. The bad thing about the collapse of 38 studios is that we won't see Amalur 2 unless someone else picks it up.

I see what Amalur needs to be a game that would win more people over. It's not perfect, but neither was Skyrim or Dragon Age. You can say that RPGs are about the story, but I feel that most of the gameplay in RPGs is treated like a secondary aspect when it really shouldn't be. The way that you experience the story in a role playing GAME is through the gameplay. If you don't play the game, you don't see the story - unlike other forms of media (books, television and cinema) where you can watch the story unfold without playing any game. So I personally get frustrated with turn based games after a few hours with them because I want hands on interaction. It's 2013 for goodness sake.

In 2013, there's no reason why we can't have Skyrim's open world, Dragon Age's story, and Dragon's Dogma/Amalur type combat in ONE game. Maybe the PS4 or Xbox One will deliver that. Until then, I appreciate what Amalur did right, and I think it deserved a better reception than what it got. Why are people who say that combat isn't the selling point of an RPG complaining about Amalur's combat? The Teeth of Naros is a good story. That was an example of what the main game in Amalur could have been if only a bit more time where put in. I really enjoyed Amalur, but there are things I'd like to see improved upon if there were ever to be a sequel. Leave the art design alone (because we already have Skyrim,DA, The Witcher, etc), fine tune the combat, and focus on the relationship between the story and the gameplay.

To the OP - have you seen or tried Vindictus for PC?

 

[infinity_turtles]

I can tell just looking through the Might ability tree, the class is way different than Finesse. I'm well versed in RPGs and their systems. You act like you have to try a build to know how it plays.

Because you were clearly right about the way that 2handed tanky builds in Dark Souls play, correct? Funny thing about depth is that it means that the fine details can make things more or less viable then they initially seem, which in turn alters the playstyle you might expect as you have to emphasize options you may not have intended to with a build.

I can look at a Borderland's build and know actually the playstyle of the build without playing it. I can look at a DnD build and know how it plays, it's not hard. There's nothing wrong with Blink because I used it as a rogue for awhile because I went into Sorcery, I only did a respec because I wanted to get some higher tier Finesse abilities like smoke bomb and gambit.

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with blink persay, it's just worse than dodge. While the travel time is the same, there's a small delay to when you actually start it to compensate for the instant travel time. This makes consecutive blinks to dodge attacks that cover a larger area, consecutive attacks that move the enemy forward, or attacks from multiple enemies surrounding you extremely unreliable. Versus a single enemy they're usually comparable, as long as you keep in mind the timing. Against multiple enemies, blink is just worse.

What game doesn't have different swing speed, ability to stagger, damage done, reach, etc. for different weapons? That's a fucking standard, not something Dark Souls did that was new.

I never claimed this was some new thing Dark Souls did, but how many games have the sheer variety of weapons as Dark Souls, with so many different move-sets? The fact is, in other games with differing movesets for weapons, weapon-type does change your playstyle too. They just have far less weapons. In Dark Souls, this is the primary thing that changes your play style, and it's got a lot of variety.

Dark Souls PvP was so unbalanced because of items that let you do stuff your build shouldn't be able to do (like the poise ring or ninja flip ring). I just searched "best pvp dark souls build" and literally the 10th Google search result contains of post of someone complaining that half the people use a katana, the wolf ring, and havel's gauntlets. Also, the lag is pretty bad with Dark Souls with all the lag backstabs.

Half the people don't use that build. Hell, most people I run into don't use a katana. Most people I see in PvP use Sorcery because it's great for punishing mistakes. There are however flavors of the month that go by until people get used to a certain build and adjust either their play or build to account for it. And if equipment is the biggest modifier to playstyle, using specific equipment isn't doing things that they shouldn't be, it's fine-tuning your build to get a specific result. Lag-stabs are a bit of an issue, and some builds are made to take advantage of them, but lag isn't the combat being bad, and there's a lot of variety in the PvP, especially builds that take advantage of the environment.(Being invaded by The Wall certainly presented some unique challenges compared to other invasions)

I went into Dark Souls knowing its combat was slow. I bought and played the game because I wanted a solid combat system and a hard game, and I got neither. I have no problem with slow games, I love stealth games for example. The problem is Dark Souls combat wasn't very good, not that it was slow. If Dark Souls was a game you played with a set character, it would be a much better game as the only issue I have with the actual controls is that you can't backpedal with your shield up and not locked-on.

I disagree. I enjoy a lot of different games, but Dark Souls was a breath of fresh air. It's not bad combat, it's different combat. Some of my favorite combat of any game, losing out to only Dragon's Dogma. The fact that so many people enjoy it makes it pretty damn obvious that this is your opinion, not some objective fact.

Secondly, the enemies outside of the bosses don't require different strategies.

Wheel Skeletons, Anor Londo archers, Blowpipe Snipers, Great Felines, and Bounding Demons of Izalith off the top of my head. Dodging and attacking works on everything if you're good enough, but I can't think of an action game where it doesn't.

 

[joest01]

Secondly, the enemies outside of the bosses don't require different strategies.

Wheel Skeletons, Anor Londo archers, Blowpipe Snipers, Great Felines, and Bounding Demons of Izalith off the top of my head. Dodging and attacking works on everything if you're good enough, but I can't think of an action game where it doesn't.

To OP: I said it before in later playthroughs you are NOT able to block. I remember in Demons Souls NG+ (the first playthrough after mending the worlds) and the first dreggling will break your guard. But then I actually did use a steel shield +10 for some situations in Demons. I never started relying on blocking in Dark. It's short lived.

Turtle - I want to see you play through Ninja Gaiden without blocking or through Momijis chapter in Sigma2 without blocking/countering. I have not had the patience for Way of the Samurai on higher difficulties but I believe it is much the same here.

 

[infinity_turtles]

Turtle - I want to see you play through Ninja Gaiden without blocking or through Momijis chapter in Sigma2 without blocking/countering. I have not had the patience for Way of the Samurai on higher difficulties but I believe it is much the same here.

Never claimed I was good enough at all action games to manage it, just that I'm pretty sure it's possible in all of them I could think of. I did make it most of the way through a Way of the Samurai 3 playthrough without blocking though. Wasn't just dodging and attacking though, as I did a lot of pushing. I stopped playing after I got Demon's Souls though. Might go back to that playthrough now since I'm waiting for Dark Souls 2.

 

[Jason Rayes]

I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, I think its a really underrated title the deserved to sell more than it it did. For a first entry in a new IP it was pretty amazing, not a lot of new IP start that strong, it had its mistakes and I guess would have been fixed in later iterations had the company not imploded. As for why it isn't as well regarded as Dragon Age or Skyrim, well those games have a strong pedigree. They are from studios that have proved themselves and are self assured in their game design. Much as I liked Amalur, it was still a first title. Bethesda have been building Tamriel for ages, when I go into Skyrim there is not just the world design and its level of immersion, its the weight of history that comes with it, I know the world well (Ill admit I'm enough of an Elder Scrolls Geek that Ive read every book in the game. Some of them are great, some of them suck, but all of them help with the world building. Most of Tamriel's history you'll find in those books). For me Skyrim is the best Elder Scrolls yet, the NPC's and side quests just felt better written and the world itself just had a sense of weight. Amalur just cant compete with that. As for Dragon Age (The original Dragon Age) to put it in a word, writing. Bioware write great stuff when they are firing on all cylinders and while I found the overarching plot I found a little generic, discovering the party members and interacting with them was awesome. Amalur was fun but a lot of the time when talking to NPC's I just want the conversation over. I dont really get that feeling with Bioware games, especially classics like Planescape and Baldur's Gate 2. Still, I think as a new IP Amalur had real potential. I would like to see it picked up and continued.

 

[EternallyBored]

Snip

You've got your timelines reversed, the Witcher did that stuff first, not the other way around. As for anyone taking cues from Amalur, I think you mean cues from MMOs, almost everything Amalur did has been done in either action games or action oriented MMOs in the past, Amalur just set itself in a boring world and probably did more to damage that type of fighting in future RPGs than help it. Dragons Dogma would be the game that has a much better chance of propagating its playstyle to other games, I wouldn't get my hopes up though, outside of the AAA and AA arena most of the RPG stuff that's coming out is actually regressing back to the kind of combat that was in Baldur's Gate and Planescape, although to be fair, part of the reason for that is that making turn based combat is easier when your working with a weaker graphics engine like most indie games are.


Your assertions on video game stories is opinion and completely irrelevant as it still dodges the issue of Amalur being worse than the mediocre stories anyway, so you basically answered your own question, combat alone can't make a game good, although again I would say Amalur's combat is above average at best, and trumped by both Dragons Dogma and Dark Souls as far as action RPGs go. As for your views on combat, yes you should find the thing you spend most of the game doing fun, but different people find different things fun, what you call boring or terrible, other people call entertaining and engaging. I already told you, as clunky as Skyrims combat may be sometimes, I can still be engaged by it longer than combat in Amalur, KoA got old fast, and once the shiny newness wore off, all I ever saw was wasted potential and boring battles repeated too many times against samey enemies.

As far as a growing trend of action RPGs, no they've been around for a long time, just because Dark Souls got a cult following and Dragons Dogma did somewhat decently doesn't mean anything for trends, Action RPGs have been around for over a decade at least, if this was 2006 this very same topic would exist with people substituting KoA for something like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, coincidentally, when people talk about improving combat in Elder Scrolls, that game is a lot closer to what they are talking about than anything KoA did, different types of combat suit different types of games. Action RPGs will evolve and hopefully improve, we'll get another Dark Souls, and maybe even a Dragons Dogma sequel at some point. Dragons age is still party based, and they've already said they want to keep tactical mode so you'll be able to pause the game at any point to queue up orders a la DA1, so every interview Bioware has released basically states the game is between DA1 and DA2 as far as combat mechanics go, not the enemy wave hack and slash rush of DA2, but hopefully without the finicky setups and positioning from DA1. Of course, who knows the system may suck, but Bioware has admitted they've stepped back from some of the DA2 changes that were pointless or didn't work. Action RPGs aren't some new awesome wave, they are what they've always been, a type of RPG that lends itself well to some games and not to others.

None of this changes the fact that Amalur didn't receive the praise equivalent to Skyrim and DA because it was a mediocre game and even its "strong point" wasn't enough to enamor a big chunk of people , it doesn't deserve to be reviled or hated, but the collective consciousness of gaming will likely forget the game ever existed, and games like Dark Souls, Dragons Dogma, and Mass Effect will be the examples held up when talking about action RPGs and their evolution, even amongst the action RPGs that you say should be the future, KoA will be lost in the tide of higher regarded games, it's pretty much the definition of forgettable.

 

[joest01]

Turtle - I want to see you play through Ninja Gaiden without blocking or through Momijis chapter in Sigma2 without blocking/countering. I have not had the patience for Way of the Samurai on higher difficulties but I believe it is much the same here.

Never claimed I was good enough at all action games to manage it, just that I'm pretty sure it's possible in all of them I could think of. I did make it most of the way through a Way of the Samurai 3 playthrough without blocking though. Wasn't just dodging and attacking though, as I did a lot of pushing. I stopped playing after I got Demon's Souls though. Might go back to that playthrough now since I'm waiting for Dark Souls 2.

Sorry if I made it sound like a personal judgement of your skill as a gamer, which I know nothing about. I meant that in general you would be ill advised in the above games to ignore blocking as an important mechanic. While in Dark Souls it is quite the opposite, you are much better off learning to exploit the ninja flip than turtle your way through the game

But I guess they will address the generous amount of iframes in dark souls 2. which I am otherwise not optimistic about.

p.s. thanks to this thread I now need to re-add dragons dogma to my backlog, which I had dismissed after playing the demo. The co-op with npc's thing didnt do it for me. I guess I will give it another shot sometime...

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The OP is asking why wasn't Amalur as praised - in other words Amalur should have gotten similar praise precisely because it brought combat to action RPGs in a way that was refreshing. However, what was the first thing that people chose to bag on? The combat. Skyrim's combat was terrible, yet it's one of the most popular games today because people want open world exploration more than combat in their games. That's how I see it.

Amalur was a step forward for action RPGs, but the die-hard RPG fans panned it. That's a huge part of why it's not as popular as Skyrim or Dragon Age. The combat for skyrim (without mods) is objectively terrible, but you can't focus on combat if you want to talk about Skyrim. Dark/Demon's Souls is really a cult followed title that didn't get nearly as much press as Dragon's Dogma or Amalur has gotten. Even if you say that Amalur is terrible, that's still a good thing because people are checking out the game to find out why. Bad press is still press. The fiasco with 38 studios helped bring more attention to Amalur too. The bad thing about the collapse of 38 studios is that we won't see Amalur 2 unless someone else picks it up.

I see what Amalur needs to be a game that would win more people over. It's not perfect, but neither was Skyrim or Dragon Age. You can say that RPGs are about the story, but I feel that most of the gameplay in RPGs is treated like a secondary aspect when it really shouldn't be. The way that you experience the story in a role playing GAME is through the gameplay. If you don't play the game, you don't see the story - unlike other forms of media (books, television and cinema) where you can watch the story unfold without playing any game. So I personally get frustrated with turn based games after a few hours with them because I want hands on interaction. It's 2013 for goodness sake.

In 2013, there's no reason why we can't have Skyrim's open world, Dragon Age's story, and Dragon's Dogma/Amalur type combat in ONE game. Maybe the PS4 or Xbox One will deliver that. Until then, I appreciate what Amalur did right, and I think it deserved a better reception than what it got. Why are people who say that combat isn't the selling point of an RPG complaining about Amalur's combat? The Teeth of Naros is a good story. That was an example of what the main game in Amalur could have been if only a bit more time where put in. I really enjoyed Amalur, but there are things I'd like to see improved upon if there were ever to be a sequel. Leave the art design alone (because we already have Skyrim,DA, The Witcher, etc), fine tune the combat, and focus on the relationship between the story and the gameplay.

To the OP - have you seen or tried Vindictus for PC?

Pretty much exactly this.

I think a friend showed me a video of Vindictus. Is it the game where a character can grab a dragon by his toe and slam him on the ground back-and-forth like the Hulk? It looked cool but my issue with MMOs is just too much grinding before you get to cool stuff like that, single player RPGs are grind-y as it is let online MMOs that want you to play forever. I didn't try it as I don't PC game and my PC is over 10 years old.

Because you were clearly right about the way that 2handed tanky builds in Dark Souls play, correct? Funny thing about depth is that it means that the fine details can make things more or less viable then they initially seem, which in turn alters the playstyle you might expect as you have to emphasize options you may not have intended to with a build.

It's not that I didn't really think of it. But can you actually play that style and get from bonfire to bonfire? Because you only have X amount of health. I know about poise and everything but you still get hit. I have the same issue with being a mage in Dark Souls, it seemed like you just didn't get enough magic to be a pure mage, at least in an initial playthrough when you don't know where everything is.

I never claimed this was some new thing Dark Souls did, but how many games have the sheer variety of weapons as Dark Souls, with so many different move-sets? The fact is, in other games with differing movesets for weapons, weapon-type does change your playstyle too. They just have far less weapons. In Dark Souls, this is the primary thing that changes your play style, and it's got a lot of variety.

Each class of weapons is different in Dark Souls (like other games). The only thing Dark Souls has is within each weapon class, you have a slightly different heavy attack and sometimes a unique special. The KoA weapons allow for more variety.

Half the people don't use that build. Hell, most people I run into don't use a katana. Most people I see in PvP use Sorcery because it's great for punishing mistakes. There are however flavors of the month that go by until people get used to a certain build and adjust either their play or build to account for it. And if equipment is the biggest modifier to playstyle, using specific equipment isn't doing things that they shouldn't be, it's fine-tuning your build to get a specific result. Lag-stabs are a bit of an issue, and some builds are made to take advantage of them, but lag isn't the combat being bad, and there's a lot of variety in the PvP, especially builds that take advantage of the environment.(Being invaded by The Wall certainly presented some unique challenges compared to other invasions)

Characters in good armor shouldn't have a faster roll than a very light weight Dex build, that's the whole fucking point of wearing clothes is to keep the weight down for the quick roll. And likewise, light and quick builds shouldn't have high poise.

I disagree. I enjoy a lot of different games, but Dark Souls was a breath of fresh air. It's not bad combat, it's different combat. Some of my favorite combat of any game, losing out to only Dragon's Dogma. The fact that so many people enjoy it makes it pretty damn obvious that this is your opinion, not some objective fact.

That goes both ways, just because people enjoy it doesn't make it good either. The game has one pretty major control issue, which is not being able to backpedal with a shield up when not locked-on.

Wheel Skeletons, Anor Londo archers, Blowpipe Snipers, Great Felines, and Bounding Demons of Izalith off the top of my head. Dodging and attacking works on everything if you're good enough, but I can't think of an action game where it doesn't.

You have to pull out the Anor Londo archers to cite enemy variety... 1) it's only one instance of them and 2) they are the cheapest damn thing in the whole game (everyone knows that). Blowpipe Snipers, you just walk around with your shield up. Great Felines are a joke as they can't go past the trees (the trees block them for you). I forget if blocking the Wheel guys was possible. The point isn't really that there are enemies you can't block (I mentioned some in a previous post), it's that almost every encounter is the same because almost all enemies can be fought in the same manner. I wanted to the game to throw me enemies that would force me to use my special attacks or riposte, especially the forest humans or whatever they are that are supposed to be very good fighters. There's just so many enemies that you shouldn't be able to block (as a Dex build) that you can like the knights, those big guys at the start of Blighttown, etc. Even something like those ice creatures should have the power to get past my shield, I invested pretty much nothing into blocking (my shield was weak, I had no armor, I had stamina but that's all-purpose for attacking and rolling as well, it's just something you want to invest in).

You've got your timelines reversed, the Witcher did that stuff first, not the other way around. As for anyone taking cues from Amalur, I think you mean cues from MMOs, almost everything Amalur did has been done in either action games or action oriented MMOs in the past, Amalur just set itself in a boring world and probably did more to damage that type of fighting in future RPGs than help it. Dragons Dogma would be the game that has a much better chance of propagating its playstyle to other games, I wouldn't get my hopes up though, outside of the AAA and AA arena most of the RPG stuff that's coming out is actually regressing back to the kind of combat that was in Baldur's Gate and Planescape, although to be fair, part of the reason for that is that making turn based combat is easier when your working with a weaker graphics engine like most indie games are.

Demon's Souls came out 2 years before Witcher 2. Many MMOs aren't very action oriented. My friend plays a lot of MMOs (or at least tries them out) and he said the only MMO that I would probably like is Guild Wars 2 due to how the combat is in that game. I would never play WoW because of the combat nor the Bioware Star Wars MMO. It's really only like those Korean MMOs that seem to be all about good action combat, I actually did try Dungeon Fighter Online (it is 2D though).

Your assertions on video game stories is opinion and completely irrelevant as it still dodges the issue of Amalur being worse than the mediocre stories anyway, so you basically answered your own question, combat alone can't make a game good, although again I would say Amalur's combat is above average at best, and trumped by both Dragons Dogma and Dark Souls as far as action RPGs go. As for your views on combat, yes you should find the thing you spend most of the game doing fun, but different people find different things fun, what you call boring or terrible, other people call entertaining and engaging. I already told you, as clunky as Skyrims combat may be sometimes, I can still be engaged by it longer than combat in Amalur, KoA got old fast, and once the shiny newness wore off, all I ever saw was wasted potential and boring battles repeated too many times against samey enemies.

Are you really going to argue that video game writing isn't horribly lacking across the board? That's something I'm sure at least 90% of gamers would agree with. Even something like Bioshock that is considered a good story for a game is nonsensical as sending in an assassin that can't kill the target is a stupid plan. Professional writers just don't come to the video game medium due to the way in which games are developed where the levels are done first and writers have to fill-in from there. It's really impossible for video games to have equal or better writing when pretty much all the great writers don't produce any work within the medium. The only devs that you can say that consistently write at least decent level are Telltale, Bioware, and Obsidian.

Basically Bethesda's writers are bad and may in fact be better than KoA's writers but bad writing is bad writing (even if one is better than the other) and I don't give a shit about the characters in either game because they are so below par that it doesn't matter which one is better. You either buy into the characters and get attached or you don't, it's rather black and white in that regard.

KoA's combat is still interesting and changing even late in the game for me. The rogue's gambit is just a game changer. Then, I went into the Might line to get harpoon (basically Scorpion's 'get over here' move) and that opens up a lot as I can lay down the gambit traps and pull an enemy into a line of them, it's so awesome. Or I can pull an enemy to me, hit him once, and gives me a great opening to charge up my dagger attack and go flying around stabbing everyone.

As far as a growing trend of action RPGs, no they've been around for a long time, just because Dark Souls got a cult following and Dragons Dogma did somewhat decently doesn't mean anything for trends, Action RPGs have been around for over a decade at least, if this was 2006 this very same topic would exist with people substituting KoA for something like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, coincidentally, when people talk about improving combat in Elder Scrolls, that game is a lot closer to what they are talking about than anything KoA did, different types of combat suit different types of games. Action RPGs will evolve and hopefully improve, we'll get another Dark Souls, and maybe even a Dragons Dogma sequel at some point. Dragons age is still party based, and they've already said they want to keep tactical mode so you'll be able to pause the game at any point to queue up orders a la DA1, so every interview Bioware has released basically states the game is between DA1 and DA2 as far as combat mechanics go, not the enemy wave hack and slash rush of DA2, but hopefully without the finicky setups and positioning from DA1. Of course, who knows the system may suck, but Bioware has admitted they've stepped back from some of the DA2 changes that were pointless or didn't work. Action RPGs aren't some new awesome wave, they are what they've always been, a type of RPG that lends itself well to some games and not to others.

None of this changes the fact that Amalur didn't receive the praise equivalent to Skyrim and DA because it was a mediocre game and even its "strong point" wasn't enough to enamor a big chunk of people , it doesn't deserve to be reviled or hated, but the collective consciousness of gaming will likely forget the game ever existed, and games like Dark Souls, Dragons Dogma, and Mass Effect will be the examples held up when talking about action RPGs and their evolution, even amongst the action RPGs that you say should be the future, KoA will be lost in the tide of higher regarded games, it's pretty much the definition of forgettable.

I know action RPGs have been around, but they haven't been really good until recently. It wasn't until last gen were action games like DMC even were around, now RPGs are getting competent combat systems that are on the level of standalone action games. Same thing with action RPGs with shooting, Mass Effect 2 & 3 are good TPSs and Borderlands is a good FPS. Obviously, Deus Ex existed but it's not much of a shooter really. We are at the point where an RPG doesn't and shouldn't have shit combat due to it being an RPG anymore. Do you notice how excited Angry Joe is when talks about the combat of KoA or Dragon's Dogma in his reviews of those games? That's what most gamers what is to see their imagined DnD battles coming to life in a video game RPG. If an RPG wants to be all strategic, I'm fine with the game playing like XCOM but a lot RPGs try to be strategic and action-y while failing on both. Even the likes of Final Fantasy has finally decided to move on from its horrible turn-based battle systems with FFXV.

It's most RPGs own damn fault for their experiences being tainted by bad combat. An RPG DOESN'T even need combat, yet I spend most of my time fighting enemies in them, that doesn't even make sense. Let me spend a majority of my time role-playing in a ROLE-PLAYING game instead of fighting enemies. Why would I come to an RPG for shit combat when I can play an action game with great combat? The actual role-playing aspect of most RPGs is usually pretty poor. Bioware tries their best to give players a great role-playing experience in Mass Effect where you spend more time role-playing than fighting yet many RPG players refer to them (mainly 2 and 3) as shooters with RPG elements instead of RPGs. That's the RPG community's own fault, they don't even know what they want.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Man, the more I read, the more I wish I wasn't late to this party. I get the draw towards RPGs, but real time combat that is actually engaging is the the way to go!

I think combat in general is the way to go - like the way Zeno Clash melded FPS with brawling. That's overdue IMO.

The problem with doing games like Amalur and Dogma is that they have to make money. Dragon Age and Skyrim (as far as I know) are making money. I really wish that the 38 Studio fiasco did not happen, because then we'd see a sequel to Amalur that would silence the critics.

 

[ERaptor]

The problem with doing games like Amalur and Dogma is that they have to make money. Dragon Age and Skyrim (as far as I know) are making money. I really wish that the 38 Studio fiasco did not happen, because then we'd see a sequel to Amalur that would silence the critics.

No it wouldnt, at least if you refer to the game's critiques. I agree that Amalur 2, if it would refine the stuff from the first game, could be a fantastic game. That wouldnt make the first one any less bland. But for the studios involved, an actually good sequel _could_ potentially safe them, but as others stated, we wont see that happen until someone else picks up the title. And considering the reception the first one got, that wont happen imho.

Man, the more I read, the more I wish I wasn't late to this party. I get the draw towards RPGs, but real time combat that is actually engaging is the the way to go!

Meh, not necessarily. In my experience, combat isnt the defining measure of a RPG. If you just want decent combat-mechanics, you're better off just picking up DMC, Bayonetta or stuff like that. RPG's on the other hand should also deliver on everything AROUND the combat. That usually means a good story and narrative, a nice explorable world or deep character progression. Ideally a combination of the 3. Amalur did the Combat right somewhat for the very first part of the game, but it blands out fast. And since the stuff around it doesnt hold up, the thing collapses. I replayed it for a few hours to see if i missed something critical, but my experience stayed the same. I usually get to around the 3th or 4th Quest Hub before being bored horribly.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

In my experience, combat isnt the defining measure of a RPG. If you just want decent combat-mechanics, you're better off just picking up DMC, Bayonetta or stuff like that. RPG's on the other hand should also deliver on everything AROUND the combat. That usually means a good story and narrative, a nice explorable world or deep character progression.

The problem is too much time is spent fighting in RPGs thus combat becomes very important to your enjoyment since you are doing it the majority of the time. I would say RPGs should be about 25% fighting enemies and the rest, you know, actually role-playing, which many RPGs don't even attempt to do (*cough*JRPGs*cough*). An RPG doesn't even need combat at all. Sad thing is that Bayonetta actually has better characters and story than most RPGs.

 

[ERaptor]

In my experience, combat isnt the defining measure of a RPG. If you just want decent combat-mechanics, you're better off just picking up DMC, Bayonetta or stuff like that. RPG's on the other hand should also deliver on everything AROUND the combat. That usually means a good story and narrative, a nice explorable world or deep character progression.

The problem is too much time is spent fighting in RPGs thus combat becomes very important to your enjoyment since you are doing it the majority of the time. I would say RPGs should be about 25% fighting enemies and the rest, you know, actually role-playing, which many RPGs don't even attempt to do (*cough*JRPGs*cough*). An RPG doesn't even need combat at all. Sad thing is that Bayonetta actually has better characters and story than most RPGs.

Meh, thats debatable as well. I found Bayonetta's Story to be a complete mess. But thats Off-Topic.

The problem with Characters in a lot of RPG's is, that they never stick around. You know, hero enters a village, meets people, helps people and then leaves. Even if you put hours into a Character and flesh him out, if the Player just races by it wont have lasting impact. Skyrim's Characters could've potentially been good, if they werent meant to be there for around 5 minutes to deliver "Quest" and then you move on. I liked those chars most who actually got some quality time, i really got into Sheogorath back in Oblivion, i liked the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim and i wasnt far from liking the Stormcloak Guy from the Intro. Sadly, he mostly just exists to give you someone you know in a given scenario. Its sad that they didnt even try to flesh out Characters and give them depth, especially with all the followers you can take along.

Amalur did that as well, come to think of it, it did it with most other aspects. Its sooo close to being good, but then it just stops at blandness. To give an example, the Girl that gets beaten up in the first Questhub outside of the Tutorial. If you help her, it's just "Thank you." and nothing else. Why does she just spit some exposition? Why isnt there any deeper meaning behind the thing? Give me some context, something to care about, dammit!

Certainly, if stuff like the above is lacking, a really decent Combat System can compensate for a lot. The new DMC's Story was cringe-worthy, and Bayonetta's Story is like someone reading an overly long Novel-Series of twelve books to you, in a language that you barely understand. But their combat was great enough that i could even smirk at the lunatics in the cutscenes and forgive the rather lacking Story. Granted i didnt finish Bayonetta. Maybe there is a "We explain EVERYTHING!"-Moment later on that i missed.

But both DMC and Bayo are meant to be about combat. When i boot up something that calls itself a RPG i kinda expect some material around the Combat. And if that is missing, lacking or...mediocre, i tend to loose interest fast.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Meh, thats debatable as well. I found Bayonetta's Story to be a complete mess. But thats Off-Topic.

The problem with Characters in a lot of RPG's is, that they never stick around. You know, hero enters a village, meets people, helps people and then leaves. Even if you put hours into a Character and flesh him out, if the Player just races by it wont have lasting impact. Skyrim's Characters could've potentially been good, if they werent meant to be there for around 5 minutes to deliver "Quest" and then you move on. I liked those chars most who actually got some quality time, i really got into Sheogorath back in Oblivion, i liked the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim and i wasnt far from liking the Stormcloak Guy from the Intro. Sadly, he mostly just exists to give you someone you know in a given scenario. Its sad that they didnt even try to flesh out Characters and give them depth, especially with all the followers you can take along.

Amalur did that as well, come to think of it, it did it with most other aspects. Its sooo close to being good, but then it just stops at blandness. To give an example, the Girl that gets beaten up in the first Questhub outside of the Tutorial. If you help her, it's just "Thank you." and nothing else. Why does she just spit some exposition? Why isnt there any deeper meaning behind the thing? Give me some context, something to care about, dammit!

Certainly, if stuff like the above is lacking, a really decent Combat System can compensate for a lot. The new DMC's Story was cringe-worthy, and Bayonetta's Story is like someone reading an overly long Novel-Series of twelve books to you, in a language that you barely understand. But their combat was great enough that i could even smirk at the lunatics in the cutscenes and forgive the rather lacking Story. Granted i didnt finish Bayonetta. Maybe there is a "We explain EVERYTHING!"-Moment later on that i missed.

But both DMC and Bayo are meant to be about combat. When i boot up something that calls itself a RPG i kinda expect some material around the Combat. And if that is missing, lacking or...mediocre, i tend to loose interest fast.

You should definitely finish Bayonetta, the ending is so epic, better than anything in say God of War for example. Bayonetta's story is actually pretty simple to be honest, it's the way it's told that makes it seem like so much is going on. It's like many Japanese stories where there always has to be some big mystery (which usually isn't that big) and it makes it seem like there's more going on than there actually is (like any anime or JRPG really). Most of the story related stuff is explaining the worlds, I really liked the game's take on the standard heaven, hell, and normal world were nobody was good or evil, it was about balance. I also loved the game's take on witches. It was a lot better than standard RPG stories where you are the chosen one and have to save the world.

I haven't played the new DMC game. However, I really like the story and character's from Ninja Theory's other games; Heavenly Sword and Enslaved. I actually cared about the main characters in those games. Heavenly Sword's villains were a lot fun just from a character standpoint as well. It's kinda bad that I can find much better stories and characters in game genres not even known for their stories than RPGs.

I'm so sick of the "save the world" storyline in RPGs, I'd love to see an RPG along the lines of Firefly where there's overarching story hinted at but the main focus is on completing jobs just to survive and each job is basically a mini-story where you see your party of characters develop. That way, you can use characters over again in different jobs (reoccurring characters basically) instead of them just being "quest givers". Mass Effect isn't that far off to a degree, take out the whole "save the galaxy" stuff obviously. Resonance of Fate had a similar structure with you leading kind of a rag-tag team around just doing any job that came your way.

Another idea would be to actually keep the RPG rather small scale where you aren't trekking across the whole world, you have your main town/city and you do have some other towns, but you mainly stick to your area and time passes by like 5-10 year clips and the story actually takes place over your character's lifetime and you see the characters of your town age and change. Nier has a point in the game where there's a 5-year jump, which is what gave me that idea. Anyways, I think RPGs would be a lot better by scaling everything down; it's like every RPG what's to have the biggest world with the grandest adventure of all-time, which just gets old and repetitive.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

The reason it didn't get the praise of the other 2 is probably very much to do with the graphics. Graphics are everything you know, didn't anyone tell you that? I have friends who won't play games at my house because i still play on a standard definition television so feel free to completely ignore the sarcasm of my statement and have a go at me

It's funny though, Out of the 3 games you mentioned i wouldn't call any of them particularly good. KoA was far too easy with little change to the gameplay throughout. Skyrim barely has any gameplay at all and the levelling system is so broken that you can leave the first room of the game at level 27 (yes, i tested it ). Dragon age is also another poor game that spends too much time force feeding you crappy story while leaving you with a tedious combat system.

Of the 3, KoA is probably the most fun to play and has the longest completion time at around 90 hours (if i recall correctly), Skyrim is the prettiest to look at but at 75 hours doesn't quite win the race and Dragon age is the best to sit back and watch but only lasts about 50 hours. All 3 were a disappointment to me but KoA is the only game i didn't rip to pieces when speaking to other people about it.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

In my experience, combat isnt the defining measure of a RPG. If you just want decent combat-mechanics, you're better off just picking up DMC, Bayonetta or stuff like that. RPG's on the other hand should also deliver on everything AROUND the combat. That usually means a good story and narrative, a nice explorable world or deep character progression.

I'm not understanding why combat is being pushed off to the side as secondary in an RPG. In order to see the world, experience the story, and help your character get stronger, you have to fight. So the fighting part is central to the game whether you enjoy the story elements or not. If the story or the characters are bad on an RPG, I understand why fans of the genre would pan that particular game b/c story is primary for them. I prefer playing a game rather than watching a game unfold with minimal interaction on my part.

If we're talking about Amalur, I understand what you mean about the combat. I think the issue was more about the way that the story unfolded than the actual combat. You should try the Teeth of Naros story. If the Naros story was the way the larger game developed (in terms of plot) people *may* have been more into Amalur.

As I see it, people ignore the fact that in most RPGs, the combat (especially turn based ones) gets old. So they focus on the story elements,and the world you can explore. That's fine, but games like Dogma are what I actually want to see more of because we already have Skyrim (terrible combat), Dragon Age (interesting story but you don't need to play the game to experience the story), and so on. The games that are popular already have what people want. I want a blend of story, character progression and exploration that centers around killer combat. Amalur (again) was a step in that direction. Dragon's Dogma actually did a better job, but Amalur was a positive step.

I've played Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, etc, and loved those games, but they're not RPGs. It's super strange to me that people don't want combat in their RPGs but they like Dark/Demons souls...but they say Amalur is a mediocre game...and Skyrim is like the mecca or something. I really don't understand. You put down an entire game because the combat felt bland after a while, yet all these other games are amazing. I dunno, it seems strange to me is all.