Just finished
Felvidek. It's another quirky RPGMaker game in the same vein as Hylics, Black Souls, and
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden with basic turn based JRPG combat, quirky humor, and a unique artstyle to carry it. I quite enjoyed the games visual style, and the medieval writing was the best part, but was a little disappointed by the lack of gameplay and enemy variety by the ending. I finished it in about four hours, mind you with constant runbacks to towns and churches to heal up and constantly upgrading my gear, as well as two reloads with a small amount of backtracking needed, so the actual playtime is probably a bit less. Still, much better to end early then outstay its welcome.
It's main selling point is the main characters, an alcoholic knight Pavol with a hilariously unfaithful wife and Matej, a pious monk acting as the straight man getting into highjinks and adventures together, and their dynamic is both fun and memorable. Their roles aren't as differentiated in combat, but Matej can put up a bit of a fight too and isn't just a healer, which is a nice change of pace from what you might expect. Overall, I think the game is just mid, and a bit overpriced for what it is (more then Fear & Hunger which is so much more "game" then this) it's a bit hard to recommend at the present moment. More unique music and more of those fun PS1 inspired cutscenes would have really made it a complete product, but it's fine to pick up on a sale if you got an afternoon to kill. But enough about the game as a whole, let's talk about the gameplay.
However one thing I can say is this game at least tries to explore the idea-space of JRPG style combat, which is something that can't be said for all RPGMaker style games. Namely, some enemies in this game have armor, reducing the amount of damage you deal to them. In an effort to make this game more interesting, it isn't an insignificant amount of protection either; your attacks dealing about half their regular damage. Your character's weapons determine some of their Feints, special moves ala spells, and equipping a sword allows for the Half-Swording move (which I can happily report is actually half swording, and not the Mordhau grip! Pet peeve averted.) and what this move does besides dealing a chunk of damage is reduce or remove enemy armor for a few turns, giving you a chance to deal full damage with other attacks until that tougher enemy is defeated.
While extremely simple, the concept behind this intrigued me and ended up flinging me down a rabbit hole of the huge amount of possible depth and strategy in what is otherwise the absolute most basic type of turn based combat imaginable; the JRPG style. I'll put this in with my previous posts on Vampire Survivors and Halls of Torment, two tangentially related topics of discussing here. I could have sworn I've touched on this before, but this is a good time to go over it during the mandatory multi-year-long-blog-content drought lol
The Simplest Game JRPG style combat is really simple. It's a mathematical game of reducing the number of enemies hit points to zero while keeping yours above zero, with different scenarios or matchups changing what moves or abilities are best. Besides the occasional random element, such as damage numbers, turn order, critical strikes & missed attacks, enemy moves, or other shakeups- turn based combat without hidden information can be made into a "solved game". I think this has a negative connotation, despite not necessarily being a bad thing in its own right, the idea of a purely numerical planned experience would take a lot of fun out of the "gameplay".
While not technically the simplest form of combat or game that exists, I think the JRPG style combat is the least involved and most "simple" to actually play or design, with the greatest depth not involving other mechanics. What I mean by this is while an action game can be technically much simpler then a turn based game, such as enemies simply needing to be jumped on to be defeated ala Mario Bros, the physics, speed, character control, give it more depth and complexity. Action RPGs like Diablo have their similarities as well, but still have a focus on movement and aim or crowd control that isn't the same. I'd argue that since turn based games are simply picking options in a menu, with no time pressure or other forms of mechanics, it's still a more "simple" game overall. This applies to its closet counterpart in the form of the Tabletop RPG.
No other video game genre really fits as closely, at least in terms of combat mechanics, then the generic JRPG- action RPGs are too tactile and based on a totally different skill set, and strategy games lack the same single-unit control that is central to the common theme of a traditional tabletop RPG. There is also an argument to be said that tactile games, like Fire Emblem, can closely match a tabletop game in terms of mechanics. While I would admit this is true for games with heavy use of figurines and battlemaps, I think the majority of games I've personally been in have been theater of the mind combat, which in my opinion is more parallel to the quintessential JRPG style "simplest" possible engagements of numbers, preparation, resource-management, and action-economy as congruently close to the tabletop experience. You don't have to worry about getting zoned by faster enemies with ranged attacks, timing your i-frames during a perfect dodge roll, or opportunities to use your healing items in the midst of enemy attacks and interruptions; it's a pure numbers game.
So with that out of the way; how much depth can you really squeeze out of turn based combat?
Action Economy
One feature of turn based games that are unique to them is the very high importance on an action economy. In action or real-time games, this is less important (or arguably more important) because of the real time nature of the controls and instant feedback of your various moves or actions. In turn based games however, action economy plays a very vital role, mostly in the form of when it breaks.
In a traditional turn-based combat game, every unit or character is going to get one action per turn. This means each party member you have grants exponential more moves and possibilities for your turn. Even a relatively useless party member with low stats or no special moves can still be extremely useful, simply as a way to use items or acting as a soak for damage, as enemy attacks will sometimes hit them instead of your "more useful" party members. (More on that later). Secondly, anything that takes away actions, such as stuns or similar status-effects, are going to be very strong and needed to be used sparingly. One of my biggest gripes about Felvidek is that there are multiple enemies that can perform a stunning blow, and most turns you'll have one of your party members stunned and not able to use their actual useful or cool moves. You can also do it yourself, which is something I intentionally didn't abuse because I wanted to interface with other parts of the combat system. (Felvidek isn't going to be talked about much more here; I just wanted to say it explored these combat mechanics more then a lot of RPGMaker slop I've played but not as much as it could have, which inspired this blogpost).
This action economy also influences other forms of player psychology and behavior. The much-loathed "useless" status effect spells or consumable items in JRPGs are prime causalities of the action economy. I'd wager people are much more comfortable playing a buff/debuff heavy character in an Action RPG or wargame where the cost of doing a curse to an enemy or a weaker buff on an ally is a few seconds of movement (just extends the fight a few seconds, or means you need to dodge one more attack) or is at the cost of a single specialized unit that isn't doing much else anyway, as opposed to a JRPG style game (or tabletop game) where using up one of your few (or only) action in a round on something that can either fail, has minimal impact, or will only extend the fight pointlessly. ie; why would you inflict an enemy with poison if you can kill them faster with basic attacks? The only way to fix this is to make the status effects necessary to deal with on the player side (really annoying), or highly desirable AND communicate their value to the player (not always easy to do).
Additionally, some games have abilities that are very strong or useful, but come at the cost of a future or previous turn. I actually really like these moves as I think they tend to be strong enough to justify them. Hylics 2 has my favorite example of this in Pongorma's unique gesture, Lightning. Lightning is one of the most satisfying moves in the entire game, and stays constantly useful as it scales on the character's power stat, so even as the enemy's get stronger, you can continually increase how much damage it is. It also has probably one of the best turn based combat animation sounds in the history of any game ever, immortalized in the above .gif
However upon reading the description for Lightning one starts to see its strategic depth. If it was simply a stronger version of a standard attack that required Will points (the mana resource), it would be one thing, but Lightning has the effect of dealing 175% of your normal attack damage and stunning Pangorma for one round afterwards. This means in an extended battle it is always better to just attack twice for overall damage. However, if you have a method of increasing your damage temporarily (like Charge-Up, we'll get to that later) or you need an enemy dead now, then Lightning becomes an invaluable tool. Hylics makes heavy use of enemies telegraphing stronger attacks with the Charge-Up mechanic, and the game is tightly balanced enough that a Pangorma lightning on an enemy with a little more focus fire is just enough to knock them out before they can unleash whatever nasty move they want to do on your next turn. The same mechanic also appears in Felvidek too, in which using the Gun feint just straight up shoots a gun at a single enemy and does like 4x the damage of any normal attack, but the character has to 'reload' the next round, and can't act. While identical to Lightning I find this one less interesting as it's more about balancing the cost of the skill rather then the action economy/time investment, and since Felvidek's feints are so expensive you're only going to get to use them 2-3 times a fight for each character.
Similarly, Charge-Up is another move in Hylics. Charge-Up is unique in that enemy's also can use it, and always do it prior to using their strongest move, giving the player a chance to react by either focus firing that enemy, using the guard action, or otherwise trying to survive. Charge-Up also applies to the next move you perform, meaning it can also be used just to give a boost to a basic attack. However, it won't apply to using an item, guarding, or getting stunned; meaning you can still react and save it for when you need it and can't "waste" it, at least as far as I remember. I think stunning enemies with Charge-Up active (an extremely rare/endgame gesture is required as well, Hylics doesn't give you abilities like this very much) doesn't dispel it either, just giving you an extra turn.
The other interesting thing about Charge-Up is that if has unique effects on certain gestures; specifically the character-unique gestures that each of your party members have. While most gestures are learned in the world and shared among all party members, these ones come built-in with each character and tend to be the bedrock of your strategies. This further does something unique by making each party member actually play differently in the turn based generic JRPG style game, with a type of role-specificity that most other games don't have when spamming whatever basic attack or highest-damage to lowest-cost ratio spell you have available. What this adds is further depth to your planning and action-economy; choosing to use a weaker version of a gesture in a single turn, or charge up to a big and powerful attack or support move that can change the whole tide of battle.
There are also an entire host and genre of JRPGs that let you just straight up give turns from one party member to another, or "reserve" them for later use. I actually don't like these. However, I can't deny the high amount of tactical depth they can bring to a game. Being able to pass on a turn (but causing the party member who goes again to become exhausted and do less damage) was a great mechanic in Bug Fables, another turn based game, though more in the vein of Paper Mario then a RPGMaker game.
Damage & Defense
Overall, combat in tabletop games and JRPG-style games is very simple. It is simply an attack that deals damage to the enemy, with no overall baring on the enemy's ability to do their own actions (hit stun), no over-committing or stagger from a bad whiffed attack on the player's part, and no innate catchup or progressive battle mechanics. In other words, do attack and number go down until you win.
However, there is a massive amount of potential for how this can and is expanded. Though many of the games I've covered here have some of these mechanics, most do not have all. Despite such a simple base system, I can already see a few methods of offense/defense that can infer your strategies.
Base HP- Attacks deal damage to this. No special properties.
Evasion- Attacks have a chance to miss. Analogous to AC.
Armor- Attack damage is reduced by a flat or percentage value. Analogous to DR.
Regeneration- Small amount of Hit Points are regenerated each turn. Usually a buff or status-effect.
Obviously there are more mechanics then these, but even with these extremely basic four stats, I can see a massive amount of potential for a game's mechanics. For example, fighting a creature like a blob or a bear with a high Hit-Point pool (or a boss) but no other defensive abilities is significantly different then fighting a standard enemy. The game may feature damage-over-time moves or status effects like poison or fire that deal damage each round. For standard enemies with lower health pools, these attacks are slow to act and less efficient in defeating them. ie; your standard attack does 10 damage but your DoT spell deals 4 damage per round for three rounds. Overall the DoT is better, dealing 12 damage after 3 turns, but your standard attack deals more now. You can see the strategy forming already; against an enemy with ~20 hit points, standard attacks are better, as after two rounds you can defeat it, where as the damage over time + standard attack move would only have dealt 18 damage at this point (4 + 4 + 10), where as the damage over time move is better against a high health enemy like a boss, as you'll do more damage overall mixing it with standard attacks; after three rounds it would deal 32 damage total instead of just 30 with three basic attacks. Simple, but already creates a dynamic.
Evasion and Armor function similarly, either by avoiding attacks and increasing the number of hits that you need to land or deal to deal with that opponent. However, certain attacks (magic, true strike, area of effect, etc.) may be able to have no chance of being avoided, where as armor could be bypassed by similar moves. The actual mathematics work out to be about the same; two enemies with similar health but one having 50% chance to avoid hits and one with 50% damage reduction would be equivalent to each other in the number of attacks needed to defeat them, but both in terms of flavor and actual workaround methods, they could feel very different. That's not to mention the odd game which has armor as a flat damage reduction instead of percentile, which has its own entire delicious box of possibilities to open. Large single damage attacks become much better against armored opponents, where as the flurry attacks with a higher total damage split up into multiple hits are less useful.
Small side note: Hylics 2 has one of my favorite uses of this mechanic in the way of splitting damage. Basically one of the first weak enemies you fight in the game is a "Road Fleem", which has an attack called four slices. It deals four medium strength hits to random party members in a row. The attack is decent and not too special, but what is interesting is how it is used as a fight-as-a-roadblock mechanic. Basically, if you have only one party member, they'll all hit that one individual. This makes advancing past that fight as just Wayne, the starting character, almost impossible as the amount of damage is too high. But if you get a second or third character, the damage is now split up among multiple party members, thus making it more survivable.
Finally, Regeneration or enemies healing each other is a great annoyance in most games, as it undoes your progress without rewarding you any resources to compensate. Obviously this 100% depends on the actual amount of regeneration being granted by the status effect; from making fights unwinnable to a minor annoyance. I think there is a great opportunity for combat depth here though; basically requiring you to coordinate damage on that target instead of relying on status effects, area-of-effect moves, or other forms of damage to deal with them. Instead, you have to focus fire on that one enemy. Interestingly, I can't think of any examples of enemies actually using this mechanic in games as a sort of "focus on this guy OR ignore this guy" even though that seems obvious. Something like a low HP enemy that can be defeated in two or three hits, but regenerates to full Hit-Points every round, meaning when you want to deal with it you have to use one of those stronger but more expensive attacks like Pangorma's Lightning OR you have to focus multiple allies on it, less effective then area of effect and status effect spam. Hylics 2 has a lot of enemies who can heal, but typically it's telegraphed and certain enemies support each other, making target prioritization a big part of that game and very fun, in my opinion.
Side note: This is by no means an exhaustive list. Enemies who support or protect each other can very easily count as a second or even third form of "defense" an enemy could have in a simple target + attack command type of game. The titular example is Fear & Hunger, where attacking the head of an enemy will kill them outright, but is very hard to hit without cutting their legs first.
Progression Mechanics
Progression mechanics also add a large amount of depth. Even simplistic numerical climbing can become a very interesting form of progression, content-gatekeeping, or combat dynamic. Games with smaller numbers gain more "break points" where the differences in your weapons, level-ups, buffs, or other strategies can significantly change the outcome of a battle (ie; you defeat an opponent in just four attacks instead of five, or a character survives a hit that otherwise would have knocked them out, etc.) One underrated form of progression mechanic in traditional JRPG style games is that of actually gaining party members, up the maximum you can have at a single time, as stated above, this gives you more actual
actions per turn, something to be given sparingly for sure!
Of course, progression mechanics themselves can be something as simple as a generic XP meter that fills up through fights, or a more experimental system where player power is gained (or lost) through world exploration and from equipment. I feel like there is a very strange "trend" of this being common in RPGMaker games, Hylics and Funger to name a few.
I think the most simple form of this is totally linear progression, which is separated from no progression, by making the game much more tightly balanced and each combat encounter basically being a "puzzle" with limited access to the ability to prepare for a fight, use consumables to make it easier, or cheese it with grinding. Briefly mentioned on this blog before is a little RPGMaker game called BUGGERWORLD which did this wonderfully, as every single fight in that game is a unique encounter with its own art, mechanics, and your characters gaining new skills along with the linear course of the game. With no optional fights, the only method of strategy between fights is consumable items and with such a linear and tightly-focused game it is entirely possible to softlock yourself by not having enough resources to get more healing items. This actually happened to my friend who was playing the game at the same time as me and who saved after the last shop and wasn't able to beat the final boss because of it.
Of course, every RPG lives somewhere between these two worlds. The macro-strategy level where you can just grind or prepare in the overworld to make the battles trivial, and the "puzzle" style game so tightly balanced that spending even one turn sub-optimally means certain death. I find it funny how the possible depth and exploration of this incredibly specific genre of game is so characterized by grinding and spamming auto-attack until you win it's the defining feature of the genre in its traditional format, the oldschool NES & SNES JRPG, and it took a very specific niche indie audience to sort of find the value of it at its core. It's almost like a type of game defined by the idea of bypassing and circumventing the actual "game" part of it, so you can get to the good bit of the character development and story beats that actually progress the "game". But that's a shame, because I think there is still a lot of potential to be found in the "four guys in a line" genre even today, when it has become the stereotype of the old, outdated, unfun, linear, and boring RPGs of days long past. Maybe a bit like D&D itself? Naw, let's not go there.
