Hey everyone! I’ve been diving into RPGs lately and wanted to share my thoughts and seek recommendations from fellow gamers. I’ve found myself resonating with Scott the Woz’s viewpoint on random encounters and grinding, but I do make an exception when the combat system is truly exceptional, like in the case of Undertale.Personally, I’m not particularly fond of random encounters and the need to grind excessively. I find it difficult to immerse myself in games that heavily rely on these mechanics. However, I’m open to exploring RPGs that strike a balance between engaging combat and a captivating narrative. While the combat system doesn’t necessarily have to be mind-blowing, it does need to offer some strategic depth.I’ve tried Pokémon games in the past, but they didn’t quite grab my attention. I’d prefer for the game to be available on steam or the switch. In terms of graphics I prefer pixel-art.That being said, I’m eager to hear your recommendations for pixelated RPGs that you think might suit my preferences. Whether it’s a lesser-known gem or a popular title, I’m open to any suggestions. Thanks in advance for your input, and I can’t wait to delve into some new RPG adventures!
Why not try out Western CRPGs?
I gather from what you’re writing, that you’re trying to get into JRPGs.
If you want action-laden fights without random encounters, I suggest the “old” BioWare RPGs:
- Mass Effect Trilogy
- Knights of the old Republic 1 + 2
- Dragon Age Origins (never played the sequels)
They’re old but gold and still one of the best.
And there are still:
- The Witcher 3 and
- Cyberpunk 2077
I will say that I hate to call something like Cyberpunk an RPG at all. It feels almost entirely like a shooter, with the RPG parts somewhat tacked-on. This is more evident even with the missing 6th spec tree and how, even after massive rebalancing, the whole level-up and spec-system are entirely irrelevant without a lot of mods.
Don’t get me wrong, modded the system works well.
But as installed, it’s just all rubbish and feels almost forgotten by the devs.
OP asked for “RPGs for people who don’t like RPGs”.
And yes Cyberpunk has all of that:
- Story, Conversations and Decisions
- Quests
- Skill and Leveling system
It’s a proper RPG but with a huge focus on the shooter/action part and yes, in my opinion it lacked on the Quest and interaction part.
But I wouldn’t say that the battle system alone defines a RPG, see Mass effect 2 + 3 and the Witcher.
I couldn’t see anyone mentioning so I would add Disco Elysium
Not your typical RPG by any measure, but one of my top favorite games of all time, more focused on exploration and talking/decisions rather than fighting. Also has a unique mechanic where “stats” are connected to mental attributes that talk with the character by offering advice, insight, or just poor suggestions depending on your level :D
I love Disco Elysium with all my heart, but suggesting it to a person who talks with emphasis about combat systems and strategic depth is sort of dangerous.
Disco Elysium is a novel masquerading as a game. If you like that and approach it as such, it can be extremely rewarding, but there isn’t much gameplay to be had.
CrossCode
I didn’t hear about it when it released, only got it on sale earlier this year. Apparently all this time the perfect game for me had already been out there just existing slightly outside the range of my awareness.
It is a high quality pixel art narrative RPG with a single character class that can branch any way they like, in a pseudo-MMO(single player game where the game is lore-wise an MMO that you are one character in, rest of the characters in the game are “other players” but are of course just narrative to us the real world player, but to our in-game player they are their real life friends and you know them separate from their characters). The pseudo-MMO has 5 classes, but your character is the jack of all trades class. So your various party members will be better than you at their one specialty, but if you are extremely selective, you can nearly match them at the same level if you pick only stuff for that one path. The trade off is that this class is supposed to be much harder to play.
But anyway, enough about that, the actual story of the game is awesome and I don’t want to spoil anything specific. Your character starts out unable to talk due to a malfunction of the “game”, but slowly gains more words, it’s not a gameplay mechanic, just a narrative mechanic, but it’s crazy endearing. Kind of like a “little mermaid” type scenario. She still has full control of her facial expressions and body language, and speaking of, there must be thousands of facial expressions. They did not skip out on any work in the pixel art department.
The exploration parts of the game are kind of zelda style platforming puzzles with more of an agility focus. Combat is real-time but somewhat easy, with more of a focus on stringing fights together and trying to survive as many back to back in quick succession as possible. The longer you stay in combat and string fights together, the less overall monsters you have to kill to get all the loot from a zone. Though the max monsters you need to kill at the worst is pretty low. Like 50-100 per zone. And even then it’s optional, but better.
They also have dungeons, these are also pretty similar to old school zelda, but quicker and tighter. Speaking of, character movement/control is very agile for a pixel art game. I’m not generally great at it in other games, but I love it in this game.
Ok, well I should probably stop now. I could probably go on for hours, it’s an amazing game that I’m sad I didn’t hear about til recently, but at least I did eventually hear of it. Now I feel I have to make sure other people don’t miss out on it like I almost did.
Edit: bah one more thing, character development is pretty robust. I built my entire character around thorns damage and blocking. It’s entirely possible to go through the game this way, in fact it makes some fights kind of silly. But it’s also entirely possible to never have any thorns and even to never block a single hit. But the thorns mechanic alone is pretty deep. There are several components that affect how much damage you will reflect when blocking a hit, how much the hit would have been, how much you lowered it by blocking it, how much baseline “pin body”(thorns) you have and how much defense the monster has. So a boss hitting you for 100 that you reduce down to 50 is gonna hit them back pretty hard, but so is a monster hitting you for what would have been a string of 10 hits of 3 damage, but you reduced them all to 0. Since there is a baseline, those 10 hits trigger pretty close to your minimum amount, but it’s probably alot more than 3, and certainly more than the 0 they actually did to you. There is also perfect guarding, completely unnecessary, but since my character is all about blocking, I decided to practice perfect guarding, and I got pretty good at it. Also when I perfect block a melee hit, it stuns them for 2 seconds. And perfect blocks inherently double thorns damage, like as if it was a crit.
All the mechanics seem as deep and well planned out as that too. And there are alot of mechanics. The 4 main disciplines are tank, ranged damage, melee damage and caster. Though caster is mostly just using more skills instead of auto attacks while still being either melee or ranged. Just get way more mana regen. And of course the idea is to blend and not just specialize in one, but you can also specialize. Ranged damage is done by way of shooting “spheres”, it’s also a pretty important aspect of alot of puzzle solving, but you don’t need any points in ranged damage to solve puzzles with it. I have no points in any type of damage other than thorns. My character has more than double defense versus attack. Hehe.
There is a relatively limited selection of gear, but you will likely always find something you want. Kind of similar to a final fantasy game, no unnecessary gear, just a bunch of stuff that “isn’t for you this play through”, but your party members might like what you don’t. They of course have their own money and choose when and what new gear they buy. Though bringing them to a shop that has what they want will prompt it, otherwise they’ll go shopping on their own time when not in your party.
Okay, it’s time for me to finally play this game. I got it in the summer sale because I thought it looked a little interesting but now I need it.
Golden Sun is probably one of my favorite RPGs, very deep combat system where in the lategame you will be modifying your character class in the middle of battles to change your movesets and other cool mechanics. Fairly interesting story as well. It has great GBA pixel art and it does have random encounters.
Persona 5 is a turn-based RPG that lots of people who aren’t usually into turn-based RPGs tend to like. Simple but satisfying battles, and a story that would have seemed mediocre if it wasn’t for great music and some cool moments which make it really stand out. No pixel art and also no random encounters.
OMORI is pretty good and has a really good art style. The story is also very good with some very memorable characters and moments, and pretty good music. The combat is simple and probably best described as “not bad”. The biggest downside of the game imo is that despite not being very long (<20 hours) it felt like it dragged on close to the end. It might have random encounters? I don’t really remember.
Overall I recommend Golden Sun if you are able to emulate it or something (not on steam or switch)
For clarification, Golden Sun was mostly 3d rendered models. They purposely made them to have a resemblance to pixel art since they needed it to both fit in a GBA cartridge and screen, and not look ugly while doing all that. Also I believe it is on Switch now if you pay for online and have the GBA emulator (which I personally don’t pay for and never will).
I still replay the series once every couple years, though. Fantastic series.
RPGs are such a board term nowadays that anything can be an rpg if you market it as such. But that’s not the time for it.
If you like Undertale, you might enjoy its deranged post apocalyptic cousin released near the same time, Lisa the Painful. A turn base rpg with plenty of tangible choices.
If you like more narrative stuff, play Disco Elysium or Planescape Torment.
