>NES/SNES/PS1 RPG
>Dungeons are multilayered mazes
>Filled with traps
>Often have puzzles
>A challenge to get through that makes you feel good once completed
>PS2 to Modern Era RPGS
>Flat dungeons, near featureless.
>Traps are just trapped chests, nothing more
>No puzzles. Or the puzzles amount to "put round peg into round slot."
>Usually just a straight line to the boss. Any branching paths are a short dead end or loop back into the main path.
What happened?
Brainlets.
The puzzles in older JRPGs were brainlet tier shite. The genre has always been about presentation and modern JRPGs have that in spades.
>>NES/SNES/PS1 RPG
>>Dungeons are multilayered mazes
>>Filled with traps
>>Often have puzzles
>>A challenge to get through that makes you feel good once completed
Um literally what games
>Enter dungeon
>Epproach locked door
>The door is covered in symbols
>"Wait a minute, that card..."
>Open inventory
>Check the artifact I was previously given
>Realise it has the same symbols as the door
>Line up the symbols and the door unlocks
>mfw
Bethesda are genuises
I, too, would like to know what NES-era RPGs have these multi-layered, complex dungeons.
>NES/SNES/PS1 RPG
>Dungeons are multilayered mazes
>Filled with traps
>Often have puzzles
>A challenge to get through that makes you feel good once completed
In what universe? Maybe that applies to the earliest NES RPGs, but by the time of the SNES and PS1 most jrpgs had become extremely linear and braindead in their level design.
For example, note the topright 'dungeon' from Final Fantasy 7. It's literally a straight corridor that would only a few seconds to traverse, but because of braindead asy random encounters every few steps and slow-ass combat, it ends up taking several minutes to traverse it.
>One room vs entire map
Nice cherry picking.
This.
Here's your dungeon maze OP. Only here's a twist, every few seconds while drawing your path through the maze you have to stop to fight an enemy and press an "attack" button five times before it's dead, and maybe, if anything, heal if wounded. Do that for thirty hours and you've got yourself a game for children! Or, I mean, a "JRPG classic".
Final Fantasy X happened.
Pretty much every early Dragon Quest.
I think by "multilayered" OP means you went up and down floors. Not necessarily "complex"
PS2 was the end of soulful games but the zoomers here who grew up with it won't admit it
Pic related was the turning point
ratchet 2 and deadlocked were very soulful
NES Dragon Quest, NES Final Fantasy and Wizardry comes in mind,.
Here's what I got for the NES:
- The Final Fantasy games had small multilevel mazes for dungeons. ff3 has an hour long massive dungeon, but there are no puzzles and it's linear.
- Dragon Warrior is pretty much the same, but 4 has the best dungeon design since it introduced puzzles and gimmicks to some of the dungeons, plus they aren't super inear.
- Mother 1 has massive labyrinths for dungeons and I think it shows why labyrinth level design doesn't work for JRPGs. It sucks getting lost in these things especially since the encounter rate is so high.
- I remember Ultima 3 and 4 having pretty complex multileveled mazes with some puzzles as OP described, but I can't remeber them to well and I can't find any maps online.
>tfw no sequel to Vagrant Story
Imagine the sequel with a bigger world and QOL improvements.
But on the other hand, Matsuno ruined Ivalice with XII.
>But on the other hand, Matsuno ruined Ivalice with XII.
As much as I don't care for Matsuno's work, what they did to Ivalice was likely a corporate decision by Square. It's obvious Square rebooted the Ivalice setting to cash in on the success of the Star Wars movies, which came out while FF12 was in development, which is why FF12 and FFTA suddenly have all these whacky Star Wars-esque. races and sophisticated tchnology.
>tfw no sequel to Vagrant Story
Why on earth would you want that? Game was garbage. It not only looks hideous and consists almost entirely of puke brown corridors with some of the ugliest texture work I've seen, and with characters being jittery, low-poly deformed abominations, but its combat is beyond clunky. You can't simply fight an enemy like you would in a normal action-RPG, between every attack there is a pause where you have to retarget them. Even something as simple as casting a spell pauses the game.
This is also a game where you have to switch weapons constantly, and to do so requires constant laborious and lengthy scrolling through what has got to be the worst menu system ever made.The music consists of bland, utterly forgettable orchestral ambient tracks. There's barely any sound design to speak of, and a complete lack of voice acting, while still having cutscenes with close-ups of character faces, bizarrely enough. The story is nothing more than the cliche 'bad guy gets corrupted with ancient evil force and goes mad with power' trope told in a needlessly pretentious manner.
To put things into perspective: Vagrant Story came out within the same year as other action-RPGs like Severance: Blade of Darkness, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Diablo 2. Those are action-RPGs that are actually memorable and fun.
>Vagrant Story
>action-rpg
Thank you, Vagrant Story is garbage and I never understood its hype.
That's a huge fucking stretch, user. Just because you say it's "obvious" doesn't make it true. Ivalice had always been hinting at the futuristic past that everything is built on. It makes since that PS2 hardware finally enabled them to realize it.
>But on the other hand, Matsuno ruined Ivalice with XII
Eh it's salvageable. It's just the wacky sci-fi prequel era before whatever collapse led to the FFT & VS era. I don't like it but it isn't like the lore or world is permanently ruined or whatever. They can totally disregard it in any future Ivalice game.
*blocks your path*
>Vagrant Story
>action-rpg
So what is it then? If we compare it to turn-based rpgs, it would arguably look even worse by comparison.
>So what is it then?
A third person blobber.
Dream Master
Valkyrie Profile
The Magic of Scheherazade
Wizardry
They might not be big on traps or puzzles from what I remember, but games like the first Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest do have much better dungeon exploration than most modern JRPGs. The dungeons themselves are larger and more complex, and there's actually a threat of running out of resources while traversing them. Random encounters in FF1 aren't a pointless waste of time: they can be genuinely dangerous, and they can wear your party down pretty quickly if you don't do any grinding. The combat mechanics might be simplistic, but there are meaningful choices to be made regarding which battles are worth fighting, what resources should be spent on each encounter, and whether it's safer for an exhausted party to press further into the unknown or turn back towards town.
>challenge
Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals
How retarded do you have to be to put the lovingly crafted dungeon from Wizardry next to the shitty hedge mazes of FF or DQ. Neck yourself and never again try to make the comparison faggot.
You didnt play DQ5 did you
Simplest dungeons in the series
Neither are good.
The old ones were formulaic and often poorly laid out so you just aimlessly ran around or knew precisely where to go, where a chest was, etc.
>That's a huge fucking stretch, user. Just because you say it's "obvious" doesn't make it true.
So where did all the non-human races go in FFT? The game doesn't even reference them, much less feature them. This is a huge oversight considering FFT references a ton of background material about Ivalice's history.
>Ivalice had always been hinting at the futuristic past that everything is built on.
The technology in FFT is just standard steampunk-light stuff like automatons and muskets.
FF12 on the other hand goes full Star Wars with shit like literal TIE Fighters.
>It makes since that PS2 hardware finally enabled them to realize it.
What the fuck does hardware have to do with world building? It's not as if an industrial base is harder to render than a church or whatever.
>one room vs entire map
Here's an actual FF7 dungeon
every NES and SNES dragon quest had A dungeon with a very simple puzzle and it was usually the last dungeon, they were never complex
This thread proves that JRPG players hate games that force them to think about navigation, how to explore mazes, rationing supplies and so on. Even playing Phantasy Star would make them cry. If you removed the handholding of the map in Etrian Odyssey no one would play it - since JRPG fags can't handle a real dungeon crawler.
nah.
That one is widely regarded as one of the least liked ones in the entire game.
this is complex to you?
>He hasn't played Final Fantasy VII
The room is simple either way, but that's not how it's traversed.
You guys have completed Brain Lord without help, right?
Mazes are the lamest things nature ever invented. Labyrinths are true patrician choices.
Can't remember. Played it as a kid and I knew I got close to the end since I traded it in. I only ever traded games in if I finished them or couldn't beat them.
>Labyrinths are true patrician choices.
>t.Minotaur
>people in this thread are actually arguing that traversing a maze in a game with random encounters is fun
You dipshits aren't just wearing nostalgia goggles, you've got glass-eye nostalgia implants. At least the newer DQs and FFs let you avoid REs.
Someone order some 'fun' dungeon design? Here's the easy mode one.
And here comes the pain.
Absolutely. "the solution is on the controller" is a cute puzzle.
Has anyone here played Rogue Galaxy? How based is it?
Just play better games like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight. Shitty games had bad linear dungeons back in the day too.
Throwing out the tub with the bath water imo.
Ok, so you get rid of random battles, that's cool, but you also get rid of good dungeon designs because they don't mesh well with random battles, which you already got rid of?
now that's a proper hellhole dungeon, not the corridor shit OP was describing. I really hated the "dungeons in games like Suikoden, DQXI and FFX.
FFXII and XV (seriously) have some great dungeon design.
You do know the creator of that image would just crop out one of these little rooms and draw a straight line through it, just like this?
fucking lol nah edgy shit had existed since the genesis of vidya, the change in industry structure and the move to appeal to the masses in 2007 was what killed the industry
I actually agree that 15's dungeons are pretty good.
I especially liked the culvert and the optional platforming dungeon yes, seriously.
What are some of the worst dungeons in rpg history?
As a child/teenager I really hated Air's Rock in Golden Dun 2 but now I can appreciate its layout. Also it's 100 times easier when you've figured out where to go
Most of the later Xenogears ones on disc 2. Not because they had to be bad, but just because they're so damn unfinished and rough around the edges.
Maybe you should actually list games as examples.
Culvert? And yeah, XV's dungeons range from the same linear bullshit of the other games to some really intricate vertical designs. It's even got a proper maze with that claustrophobic block one. The mines you find early on are also pretty neat.
... the platforming one can burn in hell, though.
I like the dungeons in PS2, but I wish the random encounter rate wasn't so obnoxiously high.
Easily one of the worst dungeons ever. Mother 0 is borderline as good as EB or Mother 3, but jesus christ that really took it down a peg
That plus enemies with all-target attacks that randomly get to go first. Run into a couple of those and welp time to head back to town to heal and resupply.
that shit was the biggest idiot filter. Just moving to the corners of the map is too much for JRPG player brains.
To make good RPG dungeons you need to
>have a theme for the dungeon, some kind of puzzle style or element it's focused around, to make them stand out
>make use of modern level design techniques to make dungeons more than just hallways and interconnected square/cirular rooms
>make the dungeon interesting to run around in and figure out, preferably with environmental storytelling
>the player should almost never get lost or just aimlessly run around until they get where they want, running around in a maze isn't interesting as the primary "challenge" of a dungeon
>make loops in the design so there can be alternate ways in and out of rooms
>make them feel as if they were actually designed in-world with a purpose or that they at least make sense, if they just feel like some designers mad experiment it pulls you out
>So where did all the non-human races go in FFT?
Died in the Cataclysm. Winged Ones are probably the Aegyl, FFT also mentions the Moogles are extinct. Something really devastating and apocalyptic happened between FFXII and FFT's era.
>dude idiot filter lmao XD
It's featureless and colorless and just plain ugly
o-oh shit he's gonna cast the spell!
filtered
God forbid you played a game for smart people. Where you make notes, analyze level geometry n shit
>Died in the Cataclysm. Winged Ones are probably the Aegyl
Except i'm not talking about the Aegyl. I'm talking about banga, viera, nu mou, etc. which are not references in FFT at all. Aegyl are just your standard precursor fantasy race.
>FFT also mentions the Moogles are extinct.
It's an FF games: moogles being a race was never in question. Again, I'm specifically talking about the races introduced in ff12/ffta
>Hey Earthbound, adding landmarks to your dungeons? Pffft, idiots. Why can't it all be the same thing over and over again?
lol Earthbound, the corridor game? Yes, that's appropriate for your cerebral capacities
Even just that tiny hint of detail makes all the difference in the world - can't believe you'd like such featureless shit.
As a kid, jak 2 was my favourite. As an adult doing a replay the other two jack games are trash compared to jak 1. I guess the ideal jak game is jak 1 minus the gimmick sections + the guns and story of 2
Earthbound's dungeon design was way better than Mother 1's, even if they on the simpler side. They aren't as obnoxiously huge and have have varied features that help you build a mental map.
which doesn't matter because you might as well get on a bus that takes you from A to B. That's not an adventure. Mother at least leaves you thrilled when you finish the place.
That's not Mt. Itoi
*sword temples your brain*
how the FUCK did i beat this game as a 8 year old toddler what the fuck.
Here's the thing, if EB or Mother 3 had a huge ass dungeon like Mother 0, I'd like it - because I know that because of engine limitations, Mother 0 just couldn't add those finer details, whereas M3 and EB would have those things like just a bench somewhere or maybe graffiti, that type of thing.
Every PS2 game besides the bottom of the barrel stuff like Wild Arms 4 had really weird takes on dungeons. Dark Cloud 2 were basically rougelike, Persona 3 was one big randomized mess on a time limit, La Pucelle was played entirely like an SRPG despite having dungeons and Odin Sphere was just the same circular room repeeating 10 000 times.
Though maybe I haven't played enough "generic" rpgs like Suikoden V.
People who started playing these games were more interested in the characters/story than in wandering around in a small box with constant boring fights until they found their way out.
Final Fantasy 1, specifically the Ice Cave and underwater dungeon. Dragon Quest 3 had some looping dungeons where you needed to find the right stairs to progress. Ultima 3, Ultima 4, Might & Magic, and Wizardry were all on the NES.
This. There are people who honestly claim they enjoy Jak 2 and 3, and then turn around and shit on Shadow the Hedgehog, all of this while incapable of processing the irony in their addled minds.
Megami Tensei 1 & 2, SMT 1 & 2
Pick a better game, because Shadow the Edgehog is notoriously buggy
Because believe it or not, early smt and might and magic tier dungeons didn't provide much enjoyment in completing them, the enjoyment came from shit you found to upgrade yourself, the actual dungeons themselves were a colossal chore a lot of the time. And people more and more over time very much do not like accidentally going the wrong way and being unable to go back. Dungeons are often too linear and boring, but that doesn't mean the extreme opposite end of the scale was any better.
That top right isn't even a dungeon, it's one screen in a flashback where you can't get encounters, and you have no reason to go there when you can get encounters. You can't use an entire doom level then pick one fucking screen, you'd have to pick the entirety of the nibel mountains zone to compare.
>To put things into perspective: Vagrant Story came out within the same year as other action-RPGs like Severance: Blade of Darkness, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Diablo 2. Those are action-RPGs that are actually memorable and fun.
Vagrant story isn't even remotely the same kind of game as any of them, are you retarded? It's a timing based turn based jrpg, with a focus on crafting and levelling your own gear for specific purposes. You might only like unga bunga me action me press button now games, but you're not representative of everyone buddy, many of us like inventory and equipment management and min maxing
>Mother at least leaves you thrilled when you finish the place.
"HOLY SHIT I'M FINALLY DONE WITH AIMLESSLY WANDERING THROUGH THIS FEATURELESS FACTORY ENVIRONMENT I NEVER WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS EVER AGAIN" is not a good kind of thrill.
megami tensei 1 and 2
That's just you, I love early SMT dungeons and dungeon crawling
I got lost in violated heroine and resorted to using noclip cheats.
I was not expecting that from a fucking porn game
It's not that the design itself was confusing and that's the problem. Exploring with random encounters gets annoying. I wasn't having trouble navigating, but I just wanted it to end because it started to feel tedious.
There's a difference between dungeon crawling in a dungeon crawling game and dungeon crawling an what's meant to be an actual jrpg. You wanna play eye of the beholder or warriors of the eternal sun? I'll dungeon crawl all day, because your progression in them is every encounter, every bit of xp, every upgrade you find is major. The same isn't the case in jrpgs. Walking through phantasy star 2 dungeons or smt dungeons doesn't feel the same, and the rewards aren't equivalent because the games are designed differently. Dungeon crawling games also tend to have rest systems implemented, which jrpgs don't, and having to backtrack 300 years to rest so you can continue is never enjoyable
Dragon quest 1 only had like 5 dungeons and they were not complicated at all
If were talking about complicated and multi layered dungeons smt has that
most smt type games have a teleport to base item, and even then without them i disagree that its not enjoyable, one of the fun things about dungeon crawling is resource management.
Figuring out if you want to explore that last corner of the map before heading back knowing you're very low, or panicking seeing you forgot your teleport item and fighting for your life to get back home and not lose everything are things that really give you a nice sense of danger and adventure
Zelda still has well designed dungeons. It just seems to be literally every other game, don't ask me why.
Just look at what happened to Tales of. The newest games are just corridors with deadends meanwhile Symphonia had legit dungeons.
>Why on earth would you want that? Game was garbage. It not only looks hideous and consists almost entirely of puke brown corridors with some of the ugliest texture work I've seen, and with characters being jittery, low-poly deformed abominations
I actually agree with this. For a supposedly amazing looking game set in a HUGE city like Lea Monde the payoff for four hours of selunking through caves is a couple of ugly FFT maps set in a blue void. The indoor shit looks nice if you love gothic architechture but it's obvious they wasted all the good shit on the intro because the illusion of being in a awesome gothic city is lost the minute you enter that ugly confusing forest. Oh and that' halfway.
>This is also a game where you have to switch weapons constantly, and to do so requires constant laborious and lengthy scrolling through what has got to be the worst menu system ever made.
Vagrant Story isn;t hard so much as it is confusing as heck. Just having a good affinity can keep weapn switching to minimum, until you reach soemthing annoying like the lizardmen. I found the game isn't hard so much as it is confusing as hell. Like for example my pleb filter is that wyvern in the mines. It's the easiest shit if you target it's tail...but the game doesn't tell you this so you'll think "Is it my weapon affinity?" "Am I not using the right weapon?". Hah no we just decided to give it a weak point like in action game without telling you. Same with the elemental guys, hope you chose the fire chain ability that blocks fire damage instead of the other one chump because a fire elemental boss is next.
>The story is nothing more than the cliche 'bad guy gets corrupted with ancient evil force and goes mad with power' trope told in a needlessly pretentious manner.
Exactly. It has style but it tells a really simple story. Basically a origin story for a sequel that never happened. But it has style.
im going to fuck that smug out of you
Who the fuck made that image is a full time low IQ nigger. We all played both games so comparing the first cave of a RPG with the "use your map" hint NPC to the hardest dungeon of a game purely based on dungeon wandering with items is peak autism
I first noticed that on PS2 playing .Hack/GU
what the fuck were they thinking with those randomly generated dungeons
I guess I never realized or forgot they were random gen.
I also hated Persona 3 and 4 for having bland randomly generated dungeons.
Thankfuly P1, IS, EP, PQ, PQ2 and P5 exist, even though Persona Q's dungeons are a step down from Etrian Odyssey's which were a step down from the DS era Etrian Odyssey games.