Is there a JRPG that really requires strategy to win battles

probably not. they are by and large inventory management and numbers games.

>>3884431
FF8 requires planning, not really strategy in battle, but still, the game gets harder as you level so it fits your second question.

>>3884467
FF8 is literally the last game I would think of that requires strategy

Spam Renzokuken and win: The Game

Using healing spells when you're low HP and normal attacking otherwise is a strategy.
It gets you not only through >90% of all JRPGs but it works in western RPGs just the same.

most of them, actually. name me an RPG where you think you have to "grind".

Final Fantasy games don't require grinding, for example, at least not post-VI, haven't played the others. they may be a little easy but the developers emphasize different play styles for different enemies, especially in the boss fights.

also there's literally an entire genre called strategy RPGs, and once again, mostly don't require grinding. Vandal Hearts, Tactics Ogre, Shining Force, etc.

>>3884482
I'm not saying that most JRPGs require grinding, just that they're piss easy anyways. Just have a healer and have everyone else dealing damage. If physical attacks fail, try magic. If some element fails, try another. That's the extend of "strategy" on most JRPGs

>>3884431
Yugioh, those card games

>>3884431
Romancing SaGa 2 and 3

>>3884482
>SRPGs
Grinding is an absolute nightmare in those games (some don't let you grind at all) and if you fuck up your placements/strategy even your strongest ally could get ambushed and raped in seconds. These games definitely requires more thinking and planning.

>>3884439
>>3884487
This inspires me to make a videogame where your power level never increases but you have to play smarter and learn/create new tricks with what you've got.

No items, but a large moveset that's completely unlocked from the beginning. And you have to teach yourself how to play and exploit certain moves (the game will teach you some basic ones, but not all). The only variation besides that have depends on the environment, enemy type and chosen playstyle. I've been thinking about this for a while, actually.

NOT RETRO but the Etrian Odyssey games require you to use your brain occasionally.

I remember FF10 made me do some planning for some of the later boss fights. I never could beat the third Seymour fight without first preparing all Yuna's summons to be ready to go.

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>>3884431
You realize that you don't have to grind until the game is piss easy... right?

PS1 has a decently low level cap if you need the game to force you.

>>3884521
Also this. It's based around strategy and also has a level cap. They're all decent.

>>3884496
You're basically describing Dungeons and Dragons.

>>3884496
Then game you're describing is Magicka.

Vagrant Story comes to mind. You'll scrape every enemy for 1 point of damage until you understand how to work with equipment affinities. Even then, you might have to rely on the Risk system to chain attacks and bypass enemy resistances.

>>3884468
>Spam Renzokuken and win: The Game
You still have to know how to junction your stats. Leveling up gives barely any stat boosts in this game.

>>3884482
This is an obvious troll.

>>3884493
Not at all. RS games are all about grinding. You spark new techniques on a random basis, so there's no necessary way to anticipate learning a technique that might be needed in an upcoming fight. I'd say RS is even one of the worst offenders of the grinding trope..

>>3884431
The shin megami tensei series might be up your alley. Status effects and damage based on elemental alignment are way more powerful/important in this series than in most jrpg's. It's also got sort of a Pokemon vibe to it because your entire party besides the player character are demons you recruit from random battles. Highly recommended if jrpg's seem too easy to you now, these games are legitimately hard.

Never played any that released in the /vr/ era, but from firsthand experience SMT 3, 4, and Strange Journey are all awesome.

>>3884561
What the fuck version of D&D are you talking about? The capcom beat em up? Certainly not the p&p game.

>>3884568
It's funny, I should have waited to play Etrian Odyssey. After 3 of those games I went back to SMT and found both SJ and 4 so easy by comparison they got really dull.

Soul Hackers was a little better.

>>3884567
>This is an obvious troll.
He's right though. In a well made JRPG you should never have to stop to grind, by exploring each dungeon your party should be strong enough that the upcoming boss is hard but beatable.

FFIV, Lunar 1&2 and PSIV are all good examples of that. Most JRPGs are beatable without grinding if you actually try. Thing is, most people don't. They grind first.

>>3884431
Most RPGs let you beat them at very low levels if you know what you're doing. Level 1 runs of Final Fantasy IX are possible, for example. Google or YouTube "[game] Challenge" to see what's possible, or come up with your own challenge. That's kind of the strength of RPGs, you can make the game as hard or as easy as you want it to be.

Or, if you want a game that actually prevents you from grinding, play games that cap your levels between bosses like Chrono Cross,

>>3884570
3.5
Items don't mean shit when you've got splatbooks and a DM who's trying to fuck with you.

Some encounters in SaGa Frontier encourage creativity, Riki final boss comes to mind. FF5 also allows some weird strategies, especially in challenge runs. Like reflecting debuffs off your characters to bypass enemy reflection or counters.

>>3884595
Did you miss the part where he was talking about not leveling up? Also items are still useful in 3.5.

>>3884496
>This inspires me to make a videogame where your power level never increases but you have to play smarter and learn/create new tricks with what you've got.
>>3884595
>D&D3.5

You're dumb. D&D 3.X is all about your power level going up, very severely. Level 1 you're at a disadvantage against a pack of four or five housecats, by level 5 you're fighting trolls and dragonlings.

>>3884431
Panzer Dragoon Saga.

>>3884608
It sounds like he's barely even familiar with D&D let alone played it.

>>3884612
To be fair, 3.5 is a shit edition; no one who plays it is actually playing D&D.

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>>3884631
That's true. Honestly, I've never thought any of the editions were amazing.

>>3884496

>power level never increases
>have to play smart and learn/create new tricks with what you've got
>No items
>Large moveset completely unlocked from the beginning
>Have to teach yourself to play and exploit certain moves
>Variation depends on environment, enemy type and chosen playstyle

So... a modern EVO-level fighting game?

>>3884431
Sure, a lot of the bonus dungeons in JRPGs require strategy. Of course, it's generally a very basic, autistic strategy that has to be repeated ad infinitum until the optional boss with 9999999999999999999999 HP finally dies. But it's still a strategy, you'll die if you just mash attack.

>>3884567
>RS games are all about grinding.
Grinding only makes the games harder and longer.
>You spark new techniques on a random basis
You don't, sparking obeys very precise and exploitable rules, if you go into a battle and hope to miraculously learn something just by mashing commands you're going full retard.
The only randomized part of this process is the roll checks on inputs which can also be heavily manipulated unless you're trying to learn the absolute strongest attacks, which are not even needed unless you want to minmax for some reason, and in some games like RS2 they're still extremely easy to get as long as you use the right character.
>so there's no necessary way to anticipate learning a technique that might be needed in an upcoming fight.
Actually, there's quite a lot of ways, from sparking tables to character and monster values, also BR multipliers and some other special exception.

Sounds like you played five minutes of the first RS and called it a day.
>>3884568
>these games are legitimately hard.
>Three levels of buffs and nerve bullets: the games
>Hard
Maybe if you're fighting Satan, which is just bullshit because he can oneshot your MC regardless of anything, making its battle more of a Russian roulette encounter than anything, but no retro SMT is hard as long as you buff and if you can, debuff, there's no other strategy to the games.
The non retro games aren't much better either, but this isn't the place to talk about how broken press turn is or Freikugel and such.

>>3884548
While I agree with you FFX is a good challenge, it only really shines in a no sphere-grid play through, and in the battle arena.

>enemy has no weakness
>just spam your strongest attacks
>enemy has a weakness
>forced to open every battle with a scan type ability, or even worse try every element until you find the weakness, or more typically just ignore it and spam your strongest attacks
>enemy has a specific gimmick
>people complain that it's a gimmick fight

I'm not exactly sure what kind of strategy people are expecting from JRPG battles. It's either going to be really straight forward, or it's going to be so mechanical that the fight's practically choreographed.

The general premise isn't really suited for high strategy. You'd have to make the system much more complex. Complex would generally also mean longer time investments, so it'd require the general gameplay to be altered (nobody wants to enter 15 minute tactical battles randomly ever few steps).

Eventually you're ending up with something that's not a JRPG anymore. Which is fine, but OP was asking about JRPGs.

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>>3884431
Get to level 100 in FFVIII and go to the Island Closest to Hell.
Have no magic junctioned.
Good luck!

>>3884567
>RS games are all about grinding.
Bad detected.

>>3884687
>Grinding only makes the games harder and longer.
Maybe in the case of RS1, which makes enemies scale up with your party's event rank. RS2 progresses in a different way. It's possible to avoid grinding but still force the game to advance to the next cycle / generation, leaving the player at a disadvantage. It's not uncommon for some players to strand themselves in the last chapter, too underpowered to deal with the final boss. SaGa Frontier 2 is unfortunately a similar case.

>Actually, there's quite a lot of ways, from sparking tables to character and monster values, also BR multipliers and some other special exception.
So you expect the casual player to study a comprehensive deconstruction of the game's mechanics so they can better anticipate character growth. This doesn't sound like the opposite of grinding.

>Sounds like you played five minutes of the first RS and called it a day.
Sounds like you're a raging autist who can't tolerate anyone criticizing your favorite series. Do you just want to sit here and exchange personal attacks all day, Anon? I can be every bit as much of an asshole as you.

There's MS Saga, which is a PS2 game, so not retro. Anyway, the thing is that the game throws a ton of different enemy formations in random battles, so you have to think accordingly. For example, there's an enemy that always blocks 75% of damage for 2 turns, and has no weapons. However, if you let 2 turns pass, they'll use a really strong attack on you. When you pair them up with an enemy that can interrupt your actions (there's a skill that can interrupt an action 100% of the time, but you/the enemy have to guess the correct action), you're setting yourself up for some real pain.
I mean, the hardest battle in the game is against 5 normal enemies. The thing is that they attack in a way that leaves almost no holes in attack or defense, so if you don't defeat them in 2 turns, you'll never win.

Kinda reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics, when you have those dreaded enemy combinations like Mindflares + Red Chocobos.

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>>3884673
Not even modern necessarily.

<---

>>3884696
Aren't those enemies always level 100 regardless of your level?

>>3884431
Pokemon. You still have to be the right level but there's more planning with movesets and team building rather than just steamrolling based on level.

MOST SaGa games have enemy scaling. Not sure why that one guy is just saying "maybe" Romancing SaGa 1 does. Try to power through something like SaGa Frontier without paying attention to the mechanics in Red's scenario for example (trying to spark a ton of skills solo once you get your "power up"), and you are going to have a bad time later if you don't know what you are doing. I did it as a kid, I know.

>get into a random battle
>game busts out a chessboard

Would that make you austists happy?

>>3884819
A little, yes.

panzer dragoon saga.

>>3884673
My idea is of an rpg to have those elements. And frankly I think modern fighting games have a pretty small (and boring) movelist vs what I'm imagining.

And I'm picturing a HUGE movelist with plenty of little secrets and accents and odd tricks.

Like you start out as a legendary mysterious character and you have to live up to the expectations of the characters and the world around you. You have a lot of experience, skills, and powers as a character, but you as a player, you have to discover them. I want to bring back the mystery of unlocking a secret move or alternate fighting style just by pressing the right -or wrong- combination of buttons (at the right or wrong time), with little or no guides on it unless someone else discovered it first. Add to that all the potential for details and you're talking about a virtual library of possible moves hidden in one mysterious character. No items or leveling, so the idea is you eventually meet the expectation of the legend and become an amazing character and player at the same time.

It'll be pretty interesting to have a bunch of characters ask you to take down an overwealming enemy with nothing but your bare hands, and expect you to succeed, with your character confident he/she can do it, but the only one shitting their pants is you, the player. Or maybe the opposite will happen; the confidence of your character and everyone around you might push you to succeed. The mystery for me is very important: You don't know everything you're capable of so you can get shocked or impressed when you discover something new about yourself. Add to that having to work with what little you know in the beginning, and the challenge that comes with it (having to use variants of the only three moves you know, etc), and you'll probably have a pretty fun good game. I dunno, it's pretty hard to get excited about videogame ideas and I'll probably think this is a dumb idea next week.

>>3884728
>RS2 progresses in a different way.
Yeah, it's even worse than the first one if you grind because even running away makes the BR rise so if you go full retard it punishes you even more than the other SNES titles, if not most games of the series.
>It's not uncommon for some players to strand themselves in the last chapter, too underpowered to deal with the final boss.
Too bad for them, next time will they'll play better. You mention SaGa Frontier II, that game is literally all about preparation and long term planning, itdoes not have any kind of level scaling either, as long as you have the right equipment(which is all found in chests or fixed drops), some basic abilities and a good head you can win against anything, no grinding required.
>So you expect the casual player
Who cares about the casual player?
The casual player doesn't even play or even know SaGa to begin with, the casual player is irrelevant because he/she will always struggle with anything that requires a bit of effort and choose the seemingly easier way, SaGa is one of those series built specifically to punish that kind of retarded behaviour, since the SNES trilogy at least.
If you think that making a game with no failure chance and little depth is the better choice then go play DQ or FF, you can grind all you want there without repercussions if you suck so much at managing numbers.
And it's not the only series like that, Valkyrie Profile does that too to an extent, many RPGs might become unwinnable if you play like a retard for the whole game, it's part of making a system that revolves around choices, if you make the wrong choice you have to pay for it and hopefully you'll learn from it.

Hell, in a thread that specifically asks if there's games that require strategy you shouldn't bring up casuals into the discussion, it's like saying that you shouldn't expect a player to master the physics of Umihara Kawase to play the game and that it's a bad game because it requires effort, fuck that.

Chrono Cross won't even let you level up, you have to beat the next boss to gain a new star (level). If you can't beat him with what you got tough shit, you better go back to the drawing board and plan out your element grid better.

>>3884771
Pokemon's a pretty great example, actually. Gaining levels is an afterthought compared to legit strategy, as this is a series where a Lv1 character can kill a Lv100 one if everything is set up EXACTLY right.

>>3885036
>as this is a series where a Lv1 character can kill a Lv100 one if everything is set up EXACTLY right.

That's almost impossible though and relies ohko attacks and probably a Shedinja or extreme luck

>>3884431

Megaman battle network, pokemon and paper mario.

>>3885150
>paper mario

Surely you jest.

>>3885148
I mean, yeah, I'm speaking in theory here.

It's impractical as hell, and that Pokemon won't be good for anything else, but the fact that you can POTENTIALLY do it says a lot about the battle system. That's what I'm getting at.

>>3884567
>You still have to know how to junction your stats.
Auto-junction is good enough. And Duel is better than Renzokuken.

>>3885207
>And Duel is better than Renzokuken.
yeah but the downside is having to deal with fucking Zell

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>>3884567
>Not at all. RS games are all about grinding.
Anyone who tries to grind their way through a SaGa game quickly learns what "Battle Rank" is.

>>3884431
Post-game Dragon Quest 8 and 9
Not retro but those are the only ones I can think of
Oh, and Gen 2 Pokemon competitive if you count Pokemon as a JRPG
Even though Gen 3 and higher are much better
Gen 2 is all stall, but it's still strategy

Grandia

>>3884431
The whole point of those games is to manage your characters in a way that makes the battles easier. I mean maybe you could beat that difficult boss by gaining 5 more levels and buying a better armor and spamming the same spell over and over, but that's the whole point. Grind some more, buy that new armor, learn that spell, that's where the battle is.

>>3884431
>requires
That's the tricky qualifier here. Not really, but that's only because none both go out of their way to make grinding a nonviable option, AND maintain a balance of diverse AI and player strategies. There have been plenty of games that are perfectly beatable with strategy and zero grinding, but few if any give reasonable prompt or incentive to invest in new strategy over just grinding like an autist, so that's what most players do.

>>3884868
>HUGE movelist
This is a HUGE mistake. Simplicity goes a long way you know? Even fighters which you said had "small" movelists suffer from 50% being just outclassed in every possible situation sometimes. Having to search for those which are not is just bad and pretty boring. There's a reason MOBA's replaced RTS's competitively. They are 80% as deep, 20% as complex.

>>3886090
also 50%:
more fun
less arthritis-inducing

>>3885913
>but few if any give reasonable prompt or incentive to invest in new strategy over just grinding like an autist, so that's what most players do.

What are you even talking about? Good roguelikes make grinding either impossible or so inefficient it would be foolish to try. It's one of the cores of the genre.

>>3884431
Final Fantasy 2, It's a different type of grind, and needs to actually be thought of
it's not just xp, level up
Go try it out

>>3884567

>obvious troll

lists me games where you have to grind then, retard. almost none of the popular jrps from fifth gen require grinding

>>3884431
insane difficulty had some SNES and PS1 era JRPG patches/hacks that i strongly recommend. currently playing the FFIX hard mode and it's been fun so far, very tough.

>>3886250
these tend to be hit and miss but New Threat for the PC version of FF7 is awesome and requires a lot of strategy and preparation

>>3884868
Unless you can assign single buttons to these attacks/skills/moves, this sounds like a game overly complicated and incredibly boring. Like, if there's some move that's specifically for killing dragons hidden somewhere deep in the player character's arsenal, I don't think it would be worth the hours of time trying to figure out the right string of long button inputs to learn it and then write that down, and then remember to do it when I run into a dragon. To go back to the fighting game metaphor, it takes higher levels of play to pull off moves that take 10 inputs in the span of a few seconds, which sounds like a lot of the abilities in this game.

And hopefully this game has non-active turn based battles. In fact, from the sounds of it, there's no point in making it an RPG if no leveling is involved aside from having to do turn based battles to input this long ass commands. It sounds more like an overly complicated action adventure game.

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>>3884868
>
It'll be pretty interesting to have a bunch of characters ask you to take down an overwealming enemy with nothing but your bare hands, and expect you to succeed, with your character confident he/she can do it, but the only one shitting their pants is you, the player.

You so build new equipment along the way and there are items you use, but in many regards you're describing Monster Hunter. It's just you or you and a few friends against a beast that might be as big as a building with hundreds of times more health and can kill you in a couple of hits raging all over the place.

There are 15 weapon types, each of which controls very differently and require very different strategies and approaches as well as each having a pretty deep learning curve to figure out how best to use them. On top of that each weapon also has 4 different styles which alter moves and playstyle more.

As said, you do build new equipment as you go along, but it's all vastly outweighed by player skill. A shitty player in the highest defense armor will still get killed really fast and true skill has always been shown by being able to beat monsters solo and naked without getting a scratch.

Most people who get into the series now watch tutorial videos on how to make the most out of each weapon type, but it's not necessary and the fun of discovering how the weapons work and what's best is a lot of fun. When I started playing the game was fairly new so there was a ton of experimentation. You can skip most of that if you wanted nowadays, but it's just as possible to go in blind and teach yourself. It's well set up so that early monsters have easy openings and you can spend time really learning the systems if you want.

There's good reason Japan is so obsessed with this series.

>>3885003
The stats you gain from battles leading up to bosses is basically the leveling equivalent in CC. You can win purely with physical attacks if you cap out before taking on a boss, which you almost always do just by exploring.

>>3884771
Pokemon is a horrible example.
the damage you do after being a few levels higher is insane, it's why starter only runs are viable in every game

>>3884648
The old editions work flawlessly for the dungeon crawls they were designed for and 2e is a good blend of light, robust and easily modded. I don't particularly like any of them and would rather play anything else, but 2e has so much to work with and the ability to handwave without breaking everything that it's pretty amazing on the whole. The individual components are all garbage.

>>3886580
>The individual components are all garbage.

That might be generally where I was going with it. Sure 2E works well but it always felt like them trying to take what was laid out with original and advanced 1st ed and work with that to keep with tradition. And the result works well enough, I would certainly never call it a bad game, but it's never been a favorite.

Shadow Heart 1+2+3

>>3884431
Yes, it's called Strategy RPG's.
Fire Emblem, Treasure Hunter G, and so on.

>>3886468
But it's still capped at some point. I never really grinded those stats because it's like +2 and didn't seem to matter much.

>>3884467
>>3884467
No, because you can just abuse the junction system to overpower yourself. It's just a different kind of grinding.

>>3884431
Most strategy I ever had to use in a JRPG were the optional fights in Skies of Arcadia DX. They were fucking hardcore, and only got harder as you leveled up.

>>3884496
So like "almost every other kind of game besides JRPGs"?

>>3886918
>It's just a different kind of grinding.
But you can do it without any grinding at all.

>>3886598
I do like that you can throw out and add whatever you want as needed and it all works as intended. I'd rather play Barbarians of Lemuria if I wanted good mechanics or just have everyone write down numbers on a sheet and roll dice as needed, but 2e is a good middle ground when I feel like opening 3 campaign books, flipping to random pages, and pretending in not making everything up as I go.

>>3886937
The point is that OP asked for a JRPG that requires strategy instead of just grinding. FF8 does not require strategy if you grind, just like any other JRPG.

>>3887070
Go play SaGa Frontier and grind up. There's a swamp full to the brim with enemies. That should give a nice biiiiiiig boost to your combat numbers.

>>3886317
Can confirm. The fact it standardized elemental weaknesses across the board is something all games can learn from. The extra stuff gets pretty whack but it is enjoyable.

not retro, but FF4 for the DS (set on active and the fastest battle speed) kicked my ass even when I was levelled appropriately untill I found the right strategy for the bosses
treasure hunter g was also neat

>>3886317
I think the early boss fights take far too long for when you have so few options, but it's still a lot better than vanilla. Like, not even close. Mechanics actually matter in that mod.

>>3886706
A level in a JRPG is usually just 1 to 3+ in a stat depending on the character archetype, HP and MP aside. Character growth is still a major, but subtle aspect of Chrono Cross, and it makes a lot of the fights beatable with only regular attacks.

>>3887109
>The fact it standardized elemental weaknesses across the board is something all games can learn from
Can you elaborate on that?

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>>3887070
>just like any other JRPG.
It's full of JRPG that punish or don't have grinding, like Chrono Cross or SaGa games.
>>3887105
>mfw Grail card quest at high BR
To be honest though, that's one of the many traps to punish retards who grind and there's not much you can do in the way of tactics, you just take it in the ass over and over again.
It's Wizardry 4 tier gratuitous dickassery made to fuck you over and little else.

>>3888418
there's a route through the swamp that will never make you get in a battle even if you stumble off of it, as long as you go back on it after stumbling

>>3888418
What shows up at high BR there? The squid is pretty tame.

>>3887051
>I do like that you can throw out and add whatever you want as needed and it all works as intended.

That's more or less true with most p&p games though. The rule books are guidlines, but different groups will have their own approaches or house rules.

Grinding seems to be a huge topic in this thread, so I'm going to bring up a non-/vr/ RPG simply to discuss its mechanics which can perfect remove grinding.
There's a JRPG (untranslated) called Evenicle and the system it uses destroys grinding and keeps the whole party (5 set units, no switching) at the level the game designers want. First, there are no random encounters, or monsters on the map (more or less). Instead, a battle begins every X steps, shown by a bar on the top right of the screen. Once you take enough steps, the bar fills up and a battle will begin after a random amount of time, but not before the bar fills up. Now the genius is thus: each area has unique mobs and enemies of different levels, naturally, and the level of these enemies determines how fast the bar fills up, represented by color. If enemies are way above your level, the bar is red, and fills up fast. If they're a little higher than you or equal, it's yellow and medium speed, and if they're lower than you, not only does the bar turn green and go up very slowly, but you can find a skill that allows such easy fights (since the enemies are way lower level than you) be autocompleted.
Basically, what happens is: when you first enter an area, you'll be fighting quite often, and the battles will be tough. But soon your level will rapidly raise during the red stage, since you're fighting so much, and soon the bar will turn yellow. The battles are easier now, and occur less often, so you'll be levelling up less, too. And then it turns green, your levelling up has more or less stopped, and battles don't happen much, enabling more exploration.
Basically, due to this bar system, the developers control what level you are at by throttling enemy encounters and thus throttling EXP. It's so brilliant and effective because it fits perfectly into the gameplay without seeming out of place, and discourages grinding because mobs take forever to appear (and don't award much EXP)

>>3886325
The idea is to use a simple thing to it's maximum potential with your own creativity or observation skills. In other words, actual strategy vs just allocating a specific move/item for a specific enemy and matching numbers and shapes. My idea is, you're forced to be smart and enemies in the game have to accomidate that by having plenty of potential responses. Strategy can still exist without turn based combat, but the environment, moves and enemies need to be more interesting and alive.

>>3886090
Eventually I said a detailed movelist, but originally all I wanted was a very basic design. You can mix up 5 or 6 buttons in plenty of ways or hold down three buttons for 3 seconds for a special movie or to switch to another style; its very easy to be simple and have a complex underbelly at the same time. My original idea was to have a very basic moveset (like 3-4 interesting moves) that you have to use wisely to adapt to different enemies and situations. So basically, a simple character that has to smart in real time to win. Then I started thinking what if there were hidden moves between the simple ones that you can time or hold down or invent. The original inspiration was to create an environment where the strategy was to actually strategize with what little you had all the time, and discover how you were gonna make it work on every enemy. Add to that interesting enemies with multiple vulnerabilities/possible strategies to succeed, and you might have an interesting game.

>>3886920
The Sisters, impostors, and Daikokuya were really fun, and I like how things start getting crazy with Lepen. Bounties were probably the best new content in SoA Legends, with Piastol a little behind.

>>3889115
Mana Khemia also has an anti-grind. You CAN grind AP all you want, but you are softcapped based on item access as you need certain items to unlock nodes in the growth book. It's basically an improved and simplified version of the FFX sphere grid

>>3884559

> if you need the game to force you.

This is part of the point of having a computer run the game simulation for you. If it doesn't force you to get good, then it isn't doing its job. Maintaining simple rules of simulation (such as "grinding is not allowed") is a computer's job, and a human should never have to do it.

>>3886221

Roguelikes aren't JRPGs.

>>3886237

Nobody said grinding was required, retarded troll. OP asked about games where STRATEGY was required (presumably meaning higher-level strategy than grinding, which itself is technically a strategy), not about games where grinding was NOT required. Of course there are games where clever strategy can be used instead of grinding, but that doesn't mean it MUST be used. You're not even on the topic.

>>3888670
It breaks the mechanics in most well designed games, is a feature of lighter systems and is a pain in the ass in later d&d editions. You can certainly interpret rules differently, but changing entire mechanics is either a feature of the system or more trouble than it's worth in my experience. Older d&d manages to be this clusterfuck of optional rules and splat rules and setting rules and house rules that is somehow balanced most of the time, whereas 3e is broken out of the box and 4 is a tac strat.

File: chronotrigger_scene_04.jpg (563KB, 1448x960px) Image search: [Google]

563KB, 1448x960px

>Is there a JRPG that really requires strategy to win battles instead of being in the right level?

Here you go
>http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/111/

>>3884491
Not even remotely a JRPG

>>3889940
Aside from Ayla getting left by the wayside due to the way her fists work, that hack was actually really good.

>>3889819
I wasn't claiming that they were. I was pointing out that grinding isn't a good strategy in most of the ones that are worth playing.

>>3889809
>Maintaining simple rules of simulation (such as "grinding is not allowed") is a computer's job, and a human should never have to do it.

I disagree fundamentally. It's a game. It's set up to completed in a number of ways and that's a good thing. If you're a bad player and want to make it easy, it's possible to just fight the same easy monsters over and over until ever monster is easy. But if you don't want to do that and enjoy a challenge then you can go through not fighting anything you don't have to.

It shouldn't be the computer's job to force the player to play in one way or another. It should be the computer's job to make the play as interesting as possible depending on how the player makes their choices.

>>3889809
Grinding is a last-resort anti-frustration measure.

>>3884431
Any of them. Just create challenges for yourself that require planning and strategic thinking. Like FF9 level 1 challenge, or something.

Most of the time grinding isn't the most efficient solution anyways. It's a brute force measure. Takes a long time, but it'll work.

I'm okay with that being an option in JRPGs. If someone wants to spend hours killing enemies rather than rubbing a few brain cells together and using a strategy, that's fine by me.

Anyway, good way to eliminate grinding being a thing at all is to make your stats come mostly from equipment rather than levels. Vagrant Story does this. Levels give you some minor stat boosts, but your damage is dependent on having the right gear. Pretty much doesn't matter what your level is, if you're not taking advantage of whatever an enemies weakness is, you're gonna be doing close to no damage.

Other than that, I can't think of any JRPGs that really require "strategy", at least not the kind that will have you actually pausing and formulating some drawn out plan. There's SMT, but the only major source of difficult comes from just actually having to use buffs and debuffs and exploiting weaknesses and whatnot.

The reason JRPGs are historically so easy is because of limited save functionality. Having progress being killed by some random battle and having to play some segment over and over again would get very aggravating for most people. Compare like 20-30 minutes of progress to having to replay a stage in like a platformer that's maybe a few minutes long. If you want to make a challenging game, it's best if it's not very punishing.

>>3885148
well, you could wall lance's dragonite with a level 3 zubat thanks to the retarded AI. Pokemon is a good concept for a low-grinding jrpg since it's basically rock-paper-scissors with 17 variants but it's not executed in a very challenging way in the actual games.

Xenosagas come to mind
Grinding and equipment could HELP but if you didn't have a sound strategy, most bosses and even some normal enemies would kick your ass.

>>3884496
You perfectly described the spell system in Rudra no Hihou.

Kinda unrelated but I'm really curious.

What's with OP's meme picture?

>>3884431
treasure of the rudras

>>3884482

shining force was the first i was gonna say

>>3884494
>>3884494
>some don't let you grind at all)

because of that.

enjoy your aids if you fucked up


>>3884496

furi already exists.
quake 3 / unreal tournament already exist
thief already exists

etc

>>3892159
>If someone wants to spend hours killing enemies rather than rubbing a few brain cells together and using a strategy, that's fine by me.
This.

I don't know why non-commercial game designers seem really hung up over it and it often seems like their cure is worse than the disease - for example, level scaling that tends to counterintuitively make intentionally staying low leveled to make the game easier or limited resources that might potentially make a game unwinnable and needing a complete restart of a 50 hour RPG

It should be rewarding and enabling low/standard level play, not trying to punish people for a mechanic that was intended to be used for a player to adjust their difficulty anyway.

>>3893557
>furi already exists.

That's not a bad comparison to what I have in mind, although i have a different scope. I never described the enemy types and environment I have in mind (or any of the moves) but its very interesting to say the least.

Honestly you just game good examples, to as far as I know, are really good games; why wouldn't we want more good games?

Theres no leveling in chrono cross, so i guess the whole game. To be fair, the games not that difficult.

>>3884496

Breath of the Wild?

>>3894991
well kekd

>>3894991
>>3895215
I want to say so much more but I have so much faith your post was a joke..

>>3895217

It describes the game perfectly though

>>3895238
No. it doesn't. Take a shit and dont flush. That describes that "game" perfectly.

>>3884689
Battle Arena is just damage races to be honest. Once you get quick hit you just rip them all to shreds.

>>3885148
>That's almost impossible though and relies ohko attacks
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Appendix:F.E.A.R.

There's also one that involves a magikarp dishing out fucktons of damage

>>3895241

Wow, you must be salty at the metacritic score. Sorry you're a PCuck or Sonygger and can't enjoy the Game of the Year

>>3895297
excuse me? I can't even believe the first few words of your post..

can I redirect you to a more, cooperati/v/e board?

>>3884567

>grinding in saga

It's been nearly a week and this is still the single dumbest post on /vr/.

>>3888438
The Kraken will usually lead off with maelstrom that can do 500-600 damage to everyone and randomly instadeath any human/mystic

>>3884496
Morrowind if you stay at level 1 and never level up.
Choose 10 forbidden skills as your majors/minors, or play with atronach sign and never sleep, or use the toolset to change the # of skillups to level to 999999999999.

This makes it so challenging and fixes many of the game's flaws.
You sidestep the asinine character development system.
The economy is improved; money being more tight when there are no Dremora Lords and Golden Saints roaming the countryside dropping daedric loot when killed.
Trainers are much less exploitable since you can't train them higher than base attributes (30-60 on lvl1 characters).
Choice of race and class actually matters beyond the early game.
You even encounter less cliffracers.


You can just pull the difficulty bar all the way down to be able to beat the TR and BM expansions.

>>3886090
>There's a reason MOBA's replaced RTS's competitively.

Because normies are too low IQ to figure out what to do in RTS and it overwhelms their cortex when they get zerged.

It's the same reason pod coffee is replacing drip coffee everywhere.

Globally we are losing 2 IQ points per decade ever since women's sexual liberation of the 60s caused them to only mate with Chads/Tyrones.

>>3895645
Well with water resistance gear that wasn't much of a problem, except when RNG strikes and everyone is a angry or sleeping.

>>3893281
More or less this.

>>3895974
>Globally we are losing 2 IQ points per decade ever since women's sexual liberation of the 60s caused them to only mate with Chads/Tyrones.
>I'm a mouthbreathing bigoted retard but take me seriously!

>>3884431
Not a JRPG, but Divinity: Original Sin is a party based RPG where you have to use strategy to win combat, taking into consideration the environment and elements, such as electrifying a puddle of water to stun a group of bandits.

>>3884431
Any of them could. The problem is that over leveling ultimately does away with all strategy.

Try playing a game, but not grinding. You may find yourself needing to use skills, buffs and debuffs, rather than just spam attacks.

Honestly though, must action based RPGs boil down to
>over level and mash attack button
So singling out JRPGS is just silly.

>>3895962
Why bother? Daggerfall is better as long as you can handle DOS graphics.

Looking back, Morrowind is at best a 6/10 game.

>>3895962
True, MW actually does have level scaling.
If you go into the 6house base where you get infected at level1 there are no enemies except that one guy and you can snatch all the great loot.