I freakin’ love Metal Gear/Solid series. It has one the best stories I know of.
I don’t find graphics to be important because I see past those things personally, but good artwork makes an already-good-game better. Presentation is good to attract people to play your game, which I assume is the goal for most people. ;D
I’ve never played Metal Gear Solid, but maybe I’ll give it a try some day…
Meh. Graphics aren’t everything, but if I’m gonna play FFX I don’t do it on a PS2. I prefer 3840x2160 with 8x MSAA. I couldn’t use FXAA at the same time though. Stupid laptop…
The core of FFX was decent however its biggest problem was that it was too linear (no world map, etc). FF7 is still the best of the lot (had really great tunes too), its materia system was really nice and simple (unlike some of the magic/levelling up systems used in later FF games).
God yes. Why did they ever change the materia system?
There are literally 2 hour long cutscenes in MGS4, and many of them. Still great, most of them are so awesome.
Hideo Kojima is a great movie maker who actually makes games, and he says this himself.
I dont have an idol, but one person I look up to, and thats him.
( BTW. I still need video playback in Java =D )
Yeah absolutely best system, and everything just got more linear after that.
In FF 13 of course many people complain about the linear level design, but the crystalis whatever its called leveling system is course a pure fraud.
there is no choice whatsoever
at least in FF X I could move Wakka to be an mage , if I really wanted to
but in 13 nothing matters anymore
Yes anything Trent Reznor touches does seem to turn to gold.
So many times I would sit down to play some mgs4, I load my file, watch an hour of cut scenes without pressing a button, save, go to work. I loved it.
Generally though for RPG’s the core mechanic (source of addictiveness?) is the old grind and reward system. The reward usually being gradual character growth (level up) and various cool items. The rest story, music, graphics, fighting system, etc are just various presentation mediums that help enhance the experience.
Thanks for all this great input guys! This community is awesome for user interaction.
If the right kind of grinding mechanic like kappa brought up is coupled with a combat system that by itself is fun, you have the best RPG ever.
I was thinking a lot about this thread today and I remembered something a lot of good RPGs share. Someone else mentioned it too and that is side activities. The thing that I remember in particular is FF VIII’s Research Center. It so far off the beaten path it isn’t funny; it’s just sitting in the ocean in the extreme bottom-left corner of the map. However, Bahamut is in there. And after him is several descending floors with high level enemies culminating into an optional boss battle with Ultima Weapon who has goodies of his own…
Just a thought.
One thing that really makes an RPG addictive in my opinion is character development. Being able to have lots of control over the way your character grows is big factor for me. How physically strong will he be? How fast? How intelligent for magic? An RPG that gives a lot of freedom for this, when combined with a great story and gameplay (as already mentioned numerous times), makes a lasting impression.
Everyone loves a good grind! I know that you need to be conscious of how much grinding you impose on the player however. For instance wow endgame stuff was like some horrible shift at work where you didnt really want to do it but you you kind of wanted the reward at the end.
I think it’s not so much “ugly” graphics that are annoying, it’s graphics without a unified style. Roguelikes do have a unified graphical style, and it’s much better than grabbing clip art from all over the internet for your graphics.
+1 for grind. Grind is important - it keeps the player on a drip feed of perceived progress. You need to regularly intersperse grind with milestones, and you need to drop random rewards in at random intervals for performing normal grind. “Maybe this treasure chest will have a potion in it? Or… this one? Or… this one? etc”
I’d hazard a guess that a slick UI married to a “why should I bother having to do this at all” mechanic that enables the player to cut out all the tedium of micromanagement is also important. For example - a backpack that only contains a certain amount of loot. This rapidly fills up with worn leather shoes, scraps of cloth, and pieces of worthless glass. Far better that the inventory was effectively infinite, because really, you’d just go and walk back and forth to the loot over and over in order to sell it all for your few gold pieces. That’s the wrong way to do grind.
Also it MUST be possible to save and restore at any point, if not necessarily multiple saves. Multiple saves are single-player friendly. I’ve never really known why the collective designers of NetHack chose to enforce an 80s gaming model in this day and age (permadeath is rubbish, basically. It removes the massive fun of “what if I did this instead next time” play)
Cas 
I actually like both ends of the spectrum. Permadeath radically changes how you play (although I have to admit dying because of a misclick is really annoying) and it is more “exciting”.
Very much this. Don’t take my orginal comment wrong. The “artistic” side of games is much more important that the quality of the programming. But games like RPGs and wargames can get away with low quality art/sound if the mechanic, story-line, etc. are compelling enough. Of course low quality assets will reduce the potential player base.
Thing is: given a choice between two roughly similar games, one with poo graphics, the other with nice modern stuff, which one gets the eyeballs? It’s rarely good enough these days to try and “get away” with something when there’s so much competition.
Cas
Because it was written in the 80’s? Fact is, there is a different dynamic to gameplay when you know your decisions are irrevocable, and the people that are into roguelikes prefer it that way. Backing up the save file is not exactly hard.
Buuuuttt! but but…that’s cheating!!!
Disagree, I’m going with the Final Fantasy Style: Savepoints.
Although there will also be continues like in MGS, so you can always continue from the start of the map or whatever (checkpoints).
So yeah you dont want that frustration… but I loved Demon’s Souls.
Characters (NPCs, single player). Skyrim is amazing and I’m enjoying it, it has so many great RPG elements, but when I compare it to Mafia or FF7/8/9 it just isn’t as good. For me it is missing characters that actually do things. Skyrim’s characters may as-well all be identical clones, they never interact beyond following the player.
How hard would of it been for a NPC to appear in a city, have a quest, then return to a difference city were the NPC would recognise the player and give a different quest? Not that even that is enough. Obviously though the more interactive the NPCs are the more linear it becomes because their actions are all scripted blah blah, which I guess is why skyrim is like that