What are some JRPGs with interesting choices & consequences and roleplaying?
I'm curious to see what japanese titles got closer to the western counterparts in this sense
Rance series. Tons of choices on who to rape with varying consequences.
>>2837402
Langrisser and Growlanser series are well known because you can really cover the spectrum of alignements, in some of those you can even become the legit bad guy and even kill your former companions if you so desire, which is pretty great. The games are also chock full of choices which not only lead you to different routes and endings but also slightly alter the general route scenario as well.
The SaGa series is one of those games that pioneered the hard gameplay roleplay by letting your characters get stronger according to what commands you use in battle, that is further elaborated in weapon and magic proficiencies, very much like Daggerfall, the more you use a sword the higher your proficiency and damage potential with Swords, in some titles you even get increases to single stats if you use weapons associated with a certain stat, swords and axes make you Strength grow for instance. The more you use a weapon the more special attacks you learn for it, in some titles growing Int and/or magic schools proficiencies is associated with spells visually evolving accordingly and getting different effects like single target fireballs having a side AoE damage subeffect, you even have a chance to learn a technique to evade or counter certain attacks like tail sweeps or even the very techinques your character use.
Romancing SaGa 2 is probably the apex in terms of general roleplaying in that your actions in the story not only get you different quest endings, but also affect the forms of certain story bosses, making them significantly stronger, one classic example is a certain boss whom you could make peace with or fight as you please, but if you decided to kill another boss related to him before meeting him he won't make peace with you and will fight you using his strongest form right away, this is achieved by having a very open, almost sandbox-like world which let's you tackle any quest in any order you like.
>>2837489
Dark Law is a minor title which feaures a neat stat system that tries to simulate real life standards in a way, each time one of your characters is KO'd you permanently lose one Stamina Point, Stamina is very important because it's used to calculate your movement range, status resistance and duration and also a few damage calculations, you might also lose other stats permanently making battles very tense, though later on in the game the difficulty goes down quite a bit.
Regarding quests, some scenarios have multiple endings and depending on your result you might or might not unlock other quests, needless to say that the game ending will also change depending on your general quest playthrough.
Another series was Lunatic Dawn, which heavily borrowed PnP gameplay since its inception, however, the series is also peculiar in which each game plays differently from each other, Lunatic Dawn is kinda like Ultima, Lunatic Dawn II is more like HoMM, Lunatic Dawn III returns to the Ultima formula but adds a completely different world system in which you explore worlds that are generated from in game items, randomly, through your game data or even by using music CDs, all the things in those worlds, including NPC which you can recruit and even marry and have kids with, dungeons and quests are created by elaborating srings of data and adding a few random variables making them always new. During your travels you'll have the chance of finding key items that will lead you to fixed story worlds in which you'll have to make choices which will influence the ending you'll get, which is added to your general behaviour in the game as well, taking a lot of assassination or thieving quests will lead you towards a different path than taking rescue or fetch quests.
Lunatic Dawn Odyssey tries a more traditional Jrpg approach by being entirely menu based but still retains a more western approach to roleplay like its predecessors with multiple endings, free exploration and all that.
>>2837491
Zill O'll, which later got a PS2 enhanced remake and a PSP enhanced port boasts an amazing number of scripted events, the option of beginning your story in different places and scenario and an incredibly high number of endings.
The roleplay in the story is excellent, you have a huge cast of different, well written characters that interact among themselves and the world they inhabit quite well, this is made possible by
not only having a completely open world and generally non linear gameplay, but also having a functional calendar progression which triggers events dynamically according to the events you triggered AND the passage of time in the game, which influence quests, relationships and character lives.
If you take too much to complete a quest you might find out that a character died or that someone related to them died, influencing their own storyline and possibly your ending as well, you might choose to side against two warrying factions and change the story progression by making a nation win a war, losing it or even make an armistice. All those events are finely interwoven and you'll find out that a lot of quests are entangled together and the result in one seemingly minor quest might greatly influence a lot of other ones, the same event can then change quite a bit while retaining the basic scenario or might even not happen at all due to your actions preventing it.
The combat, while ingenious is marred by very low and confused difficulty level in which you might never have a problem until you hit a sudden difficulty spike or not depending on how much you fought and how many quests you've completed since your main money income derives from quests and the game heavily favors equipment and skills instead of hard stats.
>>2837491
Some more famous examples of nice roleplaying are obviously the Ogre series and Valkyrie Profile.
Those also have some decent roleplay potential which let you influence the world the action takes place in and can also count on intuitive and satisfying battle systems, Ogre Battle still retains the old way of having a lot of different endings depending on your in game behaviour and alignment and not only on story decisions.
Legend of Forsaena lets you choose a faction in a classic warring kindom scenario and develops it rather well by having quite a lot of freedom regarding your progression and interactions with other factions.
Vandal Hearts 2 has some quite good story progression in terms of endings though it's mostly driven by menu choices and has some kind of cryptic reuirement to get its "best ending", the characterization of the main antagonist also takes a very heavy hit by the end, in which the writer was probably smoking crack and decided to fuck everything he had written so far, but the game in itself is very nice if not a bit hard to get into, I believe it does warrant at least a playthrough despite its linearity and general slow progression.
There are also a lot of minor game with multiple main characters, stories and endings but the quality is overall not so high.
Eldnar, known as the 7nth Saga in the west, is one good example, Farland Story, Dragon Knight IV, VN games with some classic RPG elements like Bloody Bride and naturally, a lot of Eroge.
There's quite a lot to find out really, I'm constantly digging up niche or downright obscure JRPGs, there's obviously a lot of trash but I have to say that when they do put effort in actual roleplay they are pretty amazing.
Very comprehensive responses, thanks
Jesus Christ that was extensive
this is why I love /vr/
>>2837491
>Dark Law
There is also Dark Lord for the NES and Wizap! for the SNES that share the concept of Japanese take on D&D style gameplay and mechanics that are spiritual prequels to Dark Law - Meaning of Death. The former is fully translated but the latter isn't at least to my knowledge.
There is also Metal Max for the NES that is remade for SNES and PS2. The SNES remake is called Metal Max Returns and has a fan-translation available and the PS2 remake is called Metal Saga which is officially translated.
>>2837512
>Dragon Knight IV
Your main choices are who survives and which troops you hire and the choice is often between two of the same type so the consequences are just the dialogues and minor story sequences in the towns. There's like one scene were the gunner loli leaves if you tell her something wrong.
Dating sims are a decent option but there's next to none translated
>>2837596
Oh yeah, Dark Lord is a good example I forgot to mention in my post, especially since it's one of the few games ever made which let you play as the bad guy AND the good guy, though I found it mechanically stale compared to other games.
I didn't choose to mention Metal Max because while it's probably one of the best sandbox JRPG ever made, especially considering that the original one came out on NES and is still technically mindblowing, the actual roleplay is very lacking and was only implemented well in non retro games such as Metal Saga and Metal Max 3, and even then it's more like Chrono Trigger in which you have checkpoints through the game that let you get a different ending, that said the open world in the series is amazing, world building and gameplay is also very nice and the whole vehicle mechanics are awesome, it's definitely a great series that luckily survives to this day.
Metal Max Returns has the post apocalyptic scenario I've ever found in a JRPG, for some things it's arguably better than Fallout too if you ask me.
>>2837601
Yeah, that's why I listed it in minor titles, there's also games like Traverse: Starlight & Prairie in which you can get different endings with your romantic interest and also have a few ending checkpoints along the road but all in all it isn't really that hot, there's Inindo which also tries sandbox gameplay in the Sengoku era but it's crippled by a lot of problems, and Koei's simulation RPGs like Uncharted Waters.
Rudra no Hihou might be an interesting curiosity due to its narrative gimmick of playing through 3 different parties in the same world, each unraveling a part of the main plot separately but harmoniously, but then again, there isn't any actual roleplaying except the battle mechanics there, the game's really linear and you can't change a thing.
I listed all the ones which I believe are unsung gems in the west in terms of roleplaying as decision making and the way they influence the story as OP asked.
>>2837489
>The SaGa series is one of those games that pioneered the hard gameplay roleplay by letting your characters get stronger according to what commands you use in battle
Tangentially related to the topic at hand, but I've been curious for a while what other games use this system for leveling up and building characters?
>>2837648
Final Fantasy 2.
>>2837648
Quite like it?
Well, there's Xanadu which actually started the whole single stat growth according to your commands even though it's not really as complex as SaGa.
FFII is the proto SaGa but I guess everyone knows it already.
Lunatic Dawn III has kind of a similar system in which by your stats have levels, that contribute to your general one, so if you kill with weapons a lot you'll get tons of physical levels which will also raise your HP by a good amount, conversely, killing a lot of things with Magic gives you a lot of Magic levels which raise your MP. Problem is he whole system is invalidated by items that give you global EXP. value and depending on the world you end in you can also buy those.
Quite a few games use the weapon proficiency system system though, the first ones that come to mind are Princess Minerva and Grandia, in which you gain levels regarding single weapon categories or general magic proficiency.
If you want something that does both stats and proficiency at the same time though, it's really hard to find one, I guess The Last Remnant has it, but it's not retro and it's basically a SaGa game in disguise, do check it out if you haven't already though, it's a great game.
>>2837658
There's also Runescape if I'm not mistaken (never played it myself) and Grandia. Probably a few others, but I can't remember off the top of my head.
>>2837648
Wizardry 6 onward
>>2837692
It's been a while since I played those but Wizardry 6-7-8 have a different growth system and are still level based.
They're also heavily class based whereas SaGa is almost completely free, like, you can't have a warrior use psyonic without class changes, SaGa just lets you slap the ability on any character and then you'll have to deal with it being a shitty mage if that's the case, sure, Robots can't use magic in some titles and monsters are limited to their skills but that's a racial restriction mechanic.
>>2837714
Superinformative Anon Guy, you are a scholar. What are your favourite 3 RPG releases? From the West and East, maybe even? Just curious.
>>2837720
Ehhh, tough choice.
I guess it's more or less like this:
East:
Romancing SaGa 2
Metal Max Returns
Vagrant Story
Honorable Mention goes to SaGa Frontier 1 and 2
West:
Daggerfall
Fallout 2Castle of the Winds
Honorable Mention goes to Wizardry andWizardry IV
If you want to include not retro:
East:
Unlimited: Saga
Metal Max 3
Zill O'll Infinite Plus, because it expands the original game a lot
West:
Gothic/Gothic 2, can't really choose
Morrowind
Fable
But really, I enjoy almost everything, even very simple and fanservicey stuff like SRW which I'm actually a huge fan of.
The only thing I really can't stand is DQ I guess, mostly because I developed some kind of Toriyama antibodies growing up, but it's really the only big series I can't get into at all, though Torneko's mystery dungeon is bretty gud.
>>2837746
Aside from disagreeing with your opinion on DQ, I think you're a person of refined taste.
>>2837648
Hybrid Heaven allows you to do so, and to some extent Vagrant Story does this through its weapon system.
In English? Princess Maker 2.
You raise a young girl to adulthood by making her work, take lessons and go on adventures and vacations.
A lot of different approaches and outcomes are available
>>2837491
Odyssey's really a simplified version of Artdink's Lunatic Dawn games for PC-98 and Windows, all of which focus on player C&C, varied multiple playthroughs, and complexity on the level of non-East Asian CRPGs. Lunatic Dawn: Passage of the Book is currently being fan-translated, so more players will be able to give mid-period Lunatic Dawn a test run.
>>2838130
>First playthrough
>Warrior hero
>aight, let's do things different on the second one...
>Wizard hero
mfw
Anyway, ended up watching the fuckton of other possible endings on the debug mode.... it was a ridiculous amount.
>>2837489
What's the best way to play Langrisser? I know there's translations of Lan2 and Der Langrisser, but is there nothing for the westernized Langrisser 1?
>>2838193
>Odyssey's really a simplified version of Artdink's Lunatic Dawn games for PC-98 and Windows
I'd argue about that since Odyssey is actually so "simplified" it might be considered another kind of game entirely, iirc it even lacks a lot of commands in interacting with your party members which has been present in all titles, it seems like a hybrid between console and computer RPGs for some things. The battle system also seemed different even though I haven't explored it fully, there's not the same depth at all regarding party building, formations etc., but I guess that's to be expected considering the limitations of the PS hardware, Lunatic Dawn III, while being very ambitious has terrible variety and quality in graphics, the general world structure is also very limited compared to the PC games although very addictive once you get it going and start searching for world items.
Didn't know there was a translation project going on though, that's great news for all those people who want to play some classic japanese CRPGs, Lunatic Dawn is a very worthy series to play.
>>2839056
You mean what we know as Warsong? I guess the Windows port is the most complete version of the game but I haven't done much research about it. I'm afraid that nobody did a retranslation of the game so far, but I could be wrong.
Phantasy Star 3 and Dragon Quest V
>>2839319
All I can find is a translation of the PC version that requires fucking VM emulation and specifically running through the D: drive, which seems like the most complete english version for Langrisser.
>>2839630
Oh well, better than nothing I guess.
Hope you're not too attached to the waifu you shot down because she's gonna fucking die.
at your hands.
>>2837648
It's not really /vr/ and I'm late to the party here, but Legend of Legacy is very much a modern SaGa game.
>>2837402
excuse my ignorance but
name of that game, please?
>>2840241
Shin Megami Tensei II
>>2840251
Thank you very much ;)
>>2837410
That's pretty deep mang
Gonna bump this shit for the awesome posts up top
>>2840270
Not as deep as your mom.
>>2842798
Well, if you want I can talk about some of those games in more depth, there are quite a few nice examples.
Surprised this thread is still alive by the way.
>>2843356
Please do :D
>>2843356
You've certainly given me a decent backlist of rpgs to play.
>>2839056
You aren't missing a ton by not playing Warsong that game while nice doesn't really encapsulate what the Langrisser series now represent.
My preference is Der Langrisser (2nd in the series) and Langrisser IV for the psx.
Der Langrisser gives you 3 distinct paths to choose from, people dislike it due to its reduced difficulty but I like the tradeoff, also the game is still reasonably difficult.
Langrisser IV for the psx because it's the only one in English, although mechanically it does change a bit from the Saturn.
3 and 5 to my knowledge has not and likely never will be translated but apparently they're rubbish, I'd love to play them one day though.
Oh yeah they're also developing a new one I think but from what I've heard it's going to be radically different, so if you enjoy those two I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Goodluck.
I've forgotten the title, even though it's really popular around here. I recall an rpg for the SNES wherein you choose your party members as the story unfolds and the guys you decide not to take with you become enemies you eventually fight and kill, there's a bishop looking guy who if you don't take with you becomes insanely strong and is infamous for slapping you around.
I'm embarrassed I can't remember the name but I'm sure somebody knows it. It's a neat idea, and one I always enjoyed, making decisions that actually impact the story and when you finally see the mess you've made of the ending you can look back and realise it was genuinely your fault shit turned out this way.
>>2845885
7th Saga?
>>2845896
Yeah, that's the one. Fun game.
>>2837491
I started playing Dark Law, what a really impressive game, even for '97 and a fairly small developer. It seems pretty unique.
Giving another bump.
>>2846342
Dark Law is an interesting hybrid of WRPG and JRPG feel. Poison enemies a shit though.
>>2846342
It really is a nice little game, a shame about its length, if it was done for the PSX it would have probably been longer. Do remember to always check everything during quests as lots of stuff is hidden throughout the environment.
Also, I'm on mobile now and I don't have much time but I'll definitely post some more tomorrow when I'll have free time, I'd like to talk about Dark Law and Metal Max a bit more, these games absolutely deserve to be more known.
Well, as I promised I'll talk a bit more about a few games.
Let's start with Metal Max shall we?
Now, there's really no need to talk about the NES version since the SNES one is better in every possible aspect, but if you are curious about it go take a look, it's pretty good for a NES RPG, probably one of the best on the system technically speaking, the remake is just as good.
Basically, Metal Max is a post apocalyptic JRPG series set in a modern world devastated by robots, cyborg organisms and mutant abominations, very much like Fallout in some aspects, nobody knows how the present situation came to be, discovering the story behind the mechapocalypse is the "main" quest of MM and be assured that the game does a great job regarding the lore and world, but I won't spoiler you the plot, as simplistic and cliched as it is the best part is searching for information by exploring the world.
MM is a niche, but rather well loved series in Japan, the main appeal of the series has always been the open worlds, non linearity and the vehicle gimmick.
MM's world is divided into a world map and various towns and dungeons, the good thing is that, unlike FF or DQ you won't need airships or boats to move around, there's nothing but enemies that can stop you from exploring the world as you see fit, rarely, if ever you need key items to open certain doors that lead you to certain areas and the keys, while well hidden aren't usually related to events that you need to trigger, but are rather there for you to take, though this has somewhat changed as the series progressed in regards to the game's main quest, luckily, MMR doesn't have any of this. The game offers you quite a lot of areas to explore, it probably has the richest world in terms of exploration and content in any SNES game, very few SNES games come close to MMR in that regard, I'd dare say none have such a rich and polished world but the SNES library is quite big so I won't say anything more that this.
>>2853867
The monsters and enemies populating the world are varied, most of them are animals mutated into various bionic hybrids, most of them, while comical in nature are depicted in a rather "realistic" manner, there are mutated giant octopi with antiship artillery in place of their mouths, rhynoceros beetles with laser coating armors, radar grasshoppers and so on, some of them are rather cute while others are really cool in a 90 kind of way, various mechs are also present, in a few places you'll also run into security cameras which will summon other enemies if you don't destroy them fast enough. There are also human enemies, most of them are gang members a la HNK, others are cyborgs, others are just organised guerrilla soldier, but probably the most prominent type of enemy is vehicles, you'll fight anything from colossal tanks, ships, airplanes and even UFOs, the absolute best is fighting organic mechs, like Mammoth Tanks, Dinosaur Tanks and so on.
Non linearity is a big deal in the game, in MMR there's not really much in terms of endings though, since you can just choose to end your adventure whenever by deciding to quit the Hunter life and go back on, the game doesn't even end after you beat the "Final Boss", which is a novelty for the genre, you can go around and play as much as you like until YOU decide to end the story, later installements provide a checkpoint system like Chrono Trigger, where you have the chance of ending the game at various points giving you quite a lot of different endings, it is noteworthy that those checkpoints are persistent though, so you can still have three of them at any point of the game, MM3 has a good example of this.
Generally, the endings aren't a big deal in the series until MM3, MM2 is pretty much like MM, but with a slightly different main story setting and protagonist motivation, Metal Saga kind of returns to MM settings in which you start out as a young Hunter with no definite goal besides hunting stuff for a living.
>>2853868
Talking about gameplay, the basic battle system in MM is rather crude, you have no special attacks, no magic, no techs, each weapon has different attacks and properties though, handguns and swords are simple one target attacks though some of them are rather spiced up, you even get a legit Rocket Punch at one point, chainsaws are also present for those of you who want HUGE GUTS. The majority of guns however differ quite a lot, shotguns have a AoE spray targetting, Uzi and machineguns in general have either All Target properties or double attacks, assault rifles usually shoot bullets followed by a small grenade, Bazookas are heavy hitters, Laser Guns work great on tanks, Sonic guns are great and usually attack all enemies on the field too, there's even an elaborate mortar/missile launchers that lets you unleash a rain of mortar shots on all the enemies, all in all it's great fun, just collecting them and looking at all the different attacks is really good.
Tanks, however, are the main attraction of the battle system, when you do get a tank, you can choose to fight inside it or on foot.
Tanks are your main weapon against the abominations that infest the world and monsters with a bounty, as they act like a physical shield, weapon and special effect weapon too. The most prominent feature of tanks is the high customizability, you can insall different engines, CPU, accessories and weapon on each vehicle you get, you even get an ambulance van that you can outfit with tons of missile launcher in MMR, in later titles you also get bitchin' choppers motorcicles and cars on which you can install all sort of crazy shit for all you Mad Max fans out there.
The customizability is extremely deep for its time, you have to consider a lot of things, weight, armor tiles, load, there's quite a lot to consider and it's really fun to tinker with all your vehicles, having a tank with 5 cannons is one of the best things ever.
>>2853871
Tanks also have an important function, through various shelling you have the ability to impair your enemy which is a vital matter, strong enemies have, most of the times, tanks as well, fighting just by shooting shells at each other won't end well since your enemy has the power advantage as well as tool advantage, that's when shell types come into play.
Piercing Shells have a chance of damaging a component of a tank, mostly weapons, hampering its capabilities, repeated piercing shells might also break that weapon effectively negating the enemy access to it, which is very important, you can also completely impair most enemies with some time and enough Piercing shells, unless the enemy kills you before you get to do it, which is very possible.
There are also classic status effects that can be inflicted, Toxic Shells, Napalm Shells, Freeze Shells, you name it, you have a plethora of options available to you and some of those might be the key to victory in some tough battles.
But you should not forget that the enemy has access to these very tools as well, including some very nasty ones like shockwaves, shockwaves are extremely dangerous because they're the only thing that bypasses a tank protection and goes straight to the driver, if the driver's incapacitated, no matter how fine the tank is, you're not going to have access to it, and MMR doesn't have any phoenix downs,actually it has JUST ONE in the entire game and it's extremely complex to get it., enemies who use gas are also pretty nasty since it can persist in your vehicle unless you have an Air Conditioner accessory installed to get that gas out of it, Lasers bypass your armor tiles unless you have a laser coating etc., as I said, there's a lot to consider.
>>2853874
Characters are related to tanks in quite a lot of ways, firstly because the game uses a proficiency system in which characters are versed in Pilot, Mechanic, and Fight skills, Pilot skills are essential in basic tank handling, which means aim, damage and evasion increase with your level, Mechanic skills are used to repair damaged or broken tanks, the higher the skills the better you'll be at repairing damage or broken parts, lastly, Fight is meant for foot soldiers and you fighting capacity on foot, which adds to your basic character stats.
Characters have each a specific class that influences growth, like most job systems, Hunters are great at piloting and good at everything else, Mechanics have great repairing skills and the're also decent pilots but have little actual fighting capability while Soldiers are the best fighter but are mediocre at everything else, later on the series introduced a lot of other classes such as Wrestlers, Medics and other stuff which made the gameplay quite a lot more varied and interesting.
To conclude, Metal Max is an unsung gem that never reached us outside of Metal Saga for the PS2, which is not quite on par with the rest of the series unfortunately, if you like free exploration, post apocalyptic settings and narrative based on exploration and discovery rather than cutscene infodump, you must play this series and MM Returns is a great starting point.
Now, let's talk Dark Law
Dark Law is the third game in a unnamed series by Ascii Corp., the first being Dark Half and the second being Wizap.
Now, Dark Law is kind of a mix between the two, it has a similar turn based combat concept of Dark Half but also the general layout, design concept and map system of Wizap, think of it as some kind of turn based Mana game, though it would be more apt to say that this game is kind of a precursor of Valkyria Chronicles' battle system for a lot of things.
Now, Dark Law takes place in a world called Layfall/Rayfall, which for some things is reminiscent of Dark Half since a lot of the names and lores are very similar, but it seems it's more of a spiritual successor of some sort, anyway, we'll never know since Ascii Soft is ded and it doesn't matter.
You'd be prompted to make at least one character out of four, you can make any number of characters up to four in the main character creator screen, as I said before, you'll use a dice roll system like Wizardry to modify the stats on the characters, Males have better starting stats than females but females require less EXP to level up, making them quite better in the long run, the number of character you create will be playable in the game accordingly, you don't need to make more than one but good luck with playing solo, you'll need it.
>>2853969
Characters in this game work on a quite nice system. You have non fixed stats that grow each time you gain a level, muhc like any standard JRPG, the fun thing is that while you can also randomly increase those stats by making an offering to the church, you can also lose permanently a certain stat, which is Stamina or Defense, each time your character gets KOd, which can be pretty nasty seeing how the stats work in this game.
Secondly, the characters all fall in a certain class, which can of course be changed during the game.
Classes have a certain number of advantages, first of all, classes have equipment restrictions, so you can't equip two handed swords on a Bard, secondly, classes allow you to learn specific skills, some classes might also share a skill but certain classes can learn it faster than others, lastly, classes allow you to get some money income for each level up, all classes have different income as well, so chaging to upper tier classes also nets you more money besides learning better skills.
Now, the battle system is as I said, a proto VC, you move your character freely around the map and you'll see a gauge that indicates your movement range, once you get near an enemy you can attack it with melee or you can simply move until you are in range for a ranged attack or spell, it is of course a turn based system as well so you should memorize the order of turns between your characters and the enemy, after each battle you'll get EXP. and you might collect some spoils from corpses as well, but now money at all.
>>2853970
Now, let's talk about skills, as I said you'll learn them from various classes, some classes really give away what kind of skills they're gonna get while other are a bit more difficult to infer.
Skills are divided into a few types, command skills allow you to get a new command in your menu, be it battle menu or your normal menu, Scroll allows you to use spells while Healing Lute allows you to restore a portion of your party HPs from the main menu outside of battle when you're in the main dungeon and so on. Then there are special attack skills, these skills add some special properties to your attacks, Hit&Away for instance allow ou to leap back after a melee attack to gain more safe distance from the enemy, Slash allows you to attack in different way depending on which kind of weapon you're using increasing its efficience, the nice thin about attack skills is that you have to input a command after your Attack command to activate them, making the trurn based system a bit more interactive, which is a pretty great addition. There are some passive skills related to buying and selling items, which allow you to haggle more consistently or get more money from the item you sell, which are a great way to become stronger as money is not abundant at all especially in the early game.
Lastly, there are environmental interaction skills, some are used to pick locks more effectively, others are separate actions such as jumping or swimming, which are either useful or needed during certain quests.
>>2853972
Weapons work on a fairly standard JRPG system, so I won't really talk about it, but Magic is a bit different from most titles. basically you can't get magic unless you experiment with Glyphs in the Magic Guild, you're given a certain number of Glyphs which you have to combine to discover new spells, needless to say this will cost you a lot of money but it's also very worth it, you'll also notice that in some quests you'll find some other Glyphs that were previously unavailable, but I won't tell you more than that, also because you can simply check a guide for those.
Now, the game's design is a bit reminiscent of Wizardry for certain things, you have a village hub, with the usual structures you'll find in any village hub, a smith, the Inn, an item shop, a church and so on, you can talk with all NPC in there, some of those at some point in the game will also give you quests you can and should complete.
Outside of the village there's a mysterious cave that it's tied to the main plot of the game, this cave is pretty much ye olde dungeon that you have to explore for loot but it does a pretty good job at that.
>>2853973
First of all, you can't save while you're in the dungeon(not that it matters with emulation but still) outside of the main room which has a magic circle in which you can rest and restore your HP/MP at a ludicrously low rate. The dungeon itself is composed by a relatively simple maze of rooms, some of those are locked by keys, others are locked by dynamically changing numerical passwords that must be hacked through a minigame. The main purpose of the dungeon is to give you levels(and therefore money), loot and various items, the innermost parts are also a quest of its own and its tied to the main quest toom which is unlocked later in the game. Each time you enter a room there's a possibility some enemies will spawn, enemies here are a bit particular, basically they only spawn if they're monsters on your level or stronger than you, you'll notice that as you progress further in the game and get levels, monsters will progressively STOP spawning altogether, meaning you can't grind fodder to fight stronger monsters easily or getting easy levels and money, you'll be forced to fight always strong monsters which is a good concept as the fights will always be challenging for a long while unless you've mastered the game in a few hours, which I doubt you'll ever will.
>>2853975
There's also loot to be had in the dungeon of course, but treasure chests also work randomly, basically each chest has a range of items you can get from it depending on various things such as character levels or Luck, the content of the chests change each time you open them, so you can use savestates to get the perfect item you want if you so desire, which is nice if you're one of those 100% collectionists, also, the items you get from here can also appear in the shop once you sell them as long as they aren't unique weapons, in that case you'll only be able to buy that weapon/armor/item back once instead of having a stock supply, much like Wizardry, a lot of those will also need to be appraised and that will also cost you a small fee.
Now, the Quest system is fairly interesting too, quests are tied to your levels, much like most Romancing SaGa games, meaning that you have a level threshold in which that certain quest will be available, this is nice since you'll be forced to take a quest wih a maximum level limit so you usually won't be able to just powerlevel through anything, most quests still prove to be challenging even at the max level threshold, which makes the game quite a lot balanced and interesting. Quests usually give you quite a lot of EXP and Money, most of those have hidden items of various nature that you'll need to search for, some might be visible, other might not, so you'll have to search every nook and cranny all the time, luckily, the quest maps aren't very large so it won't be really frustrating or time consuming either.
>>2853976
The quest progression is reminiscent of point and click games, it mainly is composed by investigation, interaction with NPCs and a few battles, usually on a boss level, some quests have multiple endings depending on whether you fail them or complete them, a few of those quests are vital for determining the ending of your game together with the Dungeon, but again, you can check a guide for those as it really isn't worth discussing here.
Dark Law, while severely lacking on content and a bit clunky is a pretty neat minor game with a lot of good ideas, if you've played Dark Half and Wizap you'll immediately see that it's a straight up cocktail of both games in everything, but it greatly improves the mechanics of both previous entries in he series so much it's really impressive, probably one of the finest works of Ascii Corp.
It is definitely a very cryptic game regarding ending and a few quests, more or less on the same tier of certain SaGa games or Valkyrie Profile, most people who don't have the time or interest to play through won't like Dark Law, especially because the content isn't objectively nearly enough to warrant a dedicated playthrough of the game to discover all its secret, there are only 12 or 13 quests in the whole game and they're all extremely short as well, so one can definitely see why this game didn't garner enough attention, it has its undeniable faults, but at the same time it has some little great things that make it shine quite a bit in the SNES library which was plagued by a lot of boring copypasted JRPGs and further obscured by the big guys of the time like DQ or FF.
Sorry about the wall of text by the way.
>>2854002
You're a god, I appreciate your wall of text
