Good RPGs to learn basics

Hey everybody,

People are going to make fun of me because I posted something like this about a totally different genre earlier. Hopefully you won't mind.

I love RPG's, always have. So does my fiancée, and I try to actually get ahead of her and play what she likes so that I can A.) experience/appreciate some of her favorite stuff, and B.) talk to her about it spoiler-free (unintentional spoilers flow from her like fine wine, poor lady...)

I've played the shit out of a couple of RPG's in my time...Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Diablo 2, etc. Never beat 'em, but spent a lot of time on them (I end up getting distracted and burning out,) and really enjoyed them. I've even beaten a couple (Persona 3, Dark Souls, and I might have made it through DS2 if my PS3 hadn't died...I was on the LAST GUY!!!) Thing is, that must have been magic, considering how bad I am at understanding stats and stuff. I made it halfway through Persona 4, my fiancée's favorite, and basically found out I hadn't done my party right and need to start over if I want to actually beat this damn boss that wrecks me in like three turns.

I also hit a wall like that in Ni-Oh, which is a shame, because what a game!

I'd like to get a firmer grasp of some of the principles of RPGs so that I can get more enjoyment out of the must-plays and not feel like I'm succeeding completely by accident. I know I can look up builds and stuff, but it would feel super good to put together something myself and actually have it work.

What was it that helped y'all get used to things like analyzing stats and optimizing? I don't necessarily need to breeze through everything...that's probably out of my reach. I just like to play, and I like to make progress.

Disclaimer: the fact that I suck is not the games' fault. I super respect the incredible skill of these MLG guys what tear through this stuff on the highest difficulty and figure out how the games work at a sub-atomic level. So, no excuses.

I don't think I could point to any one game that I could say "this taught me how to play RPGs". It's really more just a culmination of many many years of playing many different RPGs.

Although honestly, if I were to pick something to learn from, Persona 4 wouldn't be a bad choice. There's a decent amount of complexity to its stats and mechanics, without being completely overwhelming, like a lot of WRPGS tend to be, and it's pretty hard to permanently screw yourself over since you can just fuse new Persona whenever. ( Although if you erased some important skills on party members that could be more of a problem. )

I would recommend just spending more time with P4, experimenting with the fusion system and paying attention to how the Persona stats effect you in combat and the skills you find effective in combat. If you're still struggling in combat, and starting over is an option, you could try dropping the difficulty down and use the knowledge you've gained to do better. It's actually pretty common practice with an RPG you're unfamiliar with to play for awhile until you get your bearings, then start over and use the knowledge you gained to make better more informed decisions.

@zeik: that's a great point. right now i'm in a position where i only have like...two days maybe to clear this next boss? so I don't think I have enough time to grind enough. I had never thought about treating your first however many hours as a dry run and expecting to start over to apply whatever you figured out. I always thought of it as something kind of embarrassing. I'm going to adjust my outlook. Thank you so much!

I've long felt that the Mario & Luigi/Paper Mario RPGs are really good for beginners to the genre. That being said, if you already beat Dark Souls You probably can handle much harder stuff.

Anytime I play a new franchise or games by a new developer there is a definite learning curve until I figure out how they tend to think (e.g. Persona games tend to have emphasis on Buffs and Debuffs). So don't beat yourself up if you run into a wall trying something new. The more you play, the more natural all of this becomes.

@thebalch: RPGs tend to be very dense with mechanics, so there's no reason to feel embarrassed or ashamed if you don't understand it all right away. Even with like 20 years or so of RPG experience under my belt, there are still some now and then that I just end up stumbling through for the first several plus hours until I figure out how the hell things work. And if it's the type of game where those early choices affect you in the long run I won't hesitate to start over.

@slag: Thank you. It's always frustrating when you're playing something new, especially something you've been excited about, and you realize after dumping hours and hours into it that you have no idea what you're doing :D. Then again, Dark Souls has forced me bit by bit to not take failure personally. I used to be a terribly sore loser, to the point where playing anything with me was just a bad time. I'm definitely not that guy anymore. Just another example of what games can do for people.

On an unrelated note, I want to play Bloodborne so damn bad.

What do you think about Super Mario RPG? Paper Mario seems like a continuation of that to me. Coincidentally it's also one of my fiancée's favorite games of all time.

That's.....possible for Persona 4? 0_o (not trying to be a prick, I just didn't know your party had to have a certain makeup to progress).

Anyway I'm not an aficionado or anything, but the first JRPG I ever beat was Ni No Kuni, and it's a fantastic game, so that.

EDIT: I also hear Super Mario RPG is a great choice for newcomers.

@nicksmi56: No no, I totally get it. Maybe I fucked up in a special way. I'm at that boss that can take like two turns in a row and looks like a toy robot. You can see from its perspective and it has a targeting system or whatever. I'm only describing it because I can't recall the name for the life of me. I was doing fine up until that particular area, and all the sudden the enemies felt much harder, and he DESTROYS my party. I don't know if it's an actual spike in difficulty or if I'm being a dingus. I explained it to my fiancée and she said, "Yeah, you might need to start over. Our friend did." I wish I could grind more, but that damn fox is a price-gouging sonofabitch...I think one of my mistakes was not leveling up his social link enough. Sorry to anyone else if spoilers.

Main thing I've learned over years of playing RPGs: always have multiple saves. So when you screw up you can go back just a few hours instead of all the way.

I can't really think of any games to suggest, and I can't offer advice on that Persona boss...been too long since I've played it to remember.

@thebalch: Ahh, I see. Well I can't offer any advice on specific bosses, but for some general advice, you really don't need the fox for grinding. I never used him once. Keep in mind that you don't have to save people until the fog comes in, so that conceivably leaves you plenty of days for grinding rather than trying to force yourself to stay in the dungeon longer.

My own strategy was to fight my way to the top of a dungeon ASAP, then spend all the time I wasn't using for social links on grinding until I ran out of SP for everyone. Once I ran out, I'd leave and come back another day completely refreshed. Typically I would go a floor below the boss for my grinding since that had the strongest enemies. By the actual day you absolutely have to save someone, you'll be a lot stronger. Just keep track of the weather. If you see rain in the future, time to get your butt in there and grind out some levels, and it's always good to go in every now and then just to keep up. And despite your party members complaining, there's no actual penalty for waiting until the very last day, so use that to your advantage as extra grinding days.

Just some advice for when you start over :)

@thebalch: Firstly, the analytical approach just isn't for everybody. There are plenty of people that play something like Skyrim without ever thinking about stats and just play that sneaky elf archer because they love the fantasy of it. But if you really wanna delve into it and learn I would focus on something gameplay centric and with a fair amount of complexity.

My first thought would be Diablo 3. It's very easy to get into, it's got a multitude of choices (without being overbearing) and it's very good at giving you direct feedback. Switch out your health stat for armor and you can instantly see if it gave you more or less survivability. And even with some of the more complex things (like switching out abilities or stacking buffs) you will quickly notice the difference after doing a few greater rifts. Something that's also great about picking a fairly popular game like this is that there's a ton of accessible theorycrafting around, and you can easily look into what other people have done and figure out how that might be better or worse than your choices. More story-driven RPGs tend to have a lot more muddled mechanics and since you're always moving forward you never really get to compare results that efficiently.

@ares42: Great idea. I actually played a TON of Diablo 2 as a kid, although I never beat it. I've wanted to play 3 forever. Thanks for the reminder; I'll look into it!

@nicksmi56: Thank you for taking the time to give me those pointers. Actually I wonder if I have more time than I think I do to clear that dungeon? I'm going to load up the old save and see what I can squeeze out of it before the deadline. Maybe I'm totally mistaken about how much time is left/how big a difference a few days can make.

Like @zeik said, I think I picked up a *feel* for RPG stat management over the course of playing a bunch of different games and can't point to any one as helping me figure out what to do to make the numbers go up correctly. Luckily, unless you're playing something designed for grognards or lunatics, you can probably get away without needing to hyper-optimize or know systems inside and out. I think the fact that you got through Persona 3 is proof of that. While it's not the hardest Shin Megami Tensei game by any means, I'm pretty sure you can't just muddle your way through it without at least picking up on some of the mechanics.

RPGs with a lot of character building options aren't always transparent about what works and what doesn't, and even a weirdo like me who plays this stuff on a fairly regular basis still has to resort to respec options and the occasional backup save. Don't underestimate yourself!

@thebalch: In the case of the Persona 4 boss, you don't neccessarily need to grind or start over. Try and go catch the right personas to go fuse Black Frost or something similarily powerful. You can really abuse the persona system to pull off a fight from behind, and if you manage to beat the boss you will have plenty of time the following month to grind and catch up.

I recommend Black Frost specifically because his high level spells and mind boost/focus or whatever its called lets you do huge bursts of damage to the boss in his vulnerable state which is very useful.

As for general RPG advice. You kind of have to find out what's dangerous in the game, and how can you mitigate that danger. In a lot of cases you will die because a party member gets focused down by multiple enemies. In that scenario you can either invest in more single-target damage to do your own focus-fire and shave their numbers down one by one (this is a great general strat for many games) or invest in crowd control abilities like stun/sleep/silence or whatever the game happens to have that can limit the surviving enemies from attacking you.

Against bosses you need to find out their highest damage in one turn that they do. Let's say the double turn boss can decide to target the same party member twice and do a total of 400 damage to them. If you know that, you also know that as long as the party member has over 400hp, they can't instantly die. So you don't have to waste turns on fully healing them. Being overly defensive and using too many turns on healing will usually result in a loss against bosses in the long run in many games. You want to get away with the bare minimum of defense so you can kill things faster and minimize their threat. That's not very beginner friendly advice I suppose, but if you want to understand what RPG players do to optimize, that's a solid/common line of thinking.

All that said with minimal defense. The most important part is still being able to stay alive. When I say minimal defense, I don't mean glass cannon. I only mean that you should invest in defense up to the point where you can't instantly die in one turn. If your party gets wiped in one turn, the damage investment is worthless.

Also yeah the real answer is honestly that every game is different and you will have to experiment and try to analyze what is happening to really make the best decisions. I can only provide general advice. A lot of old games are also much harsher and require more defensive building and play. Going the route of only focus-fire and high damage will not get you far in a lot of 90s games.

Pokemon is pretty basic. All the status effects are elemental and you just make the numbers go up. But not too up.

Mario RPG, Pokemon, Paper Mario, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

My first PC RPG was SWKOTOR. The star wars property helped and it's a bioware game so that's a plus. O yeah and Pokemon but that's it's on thing IMO.

@thebalch: Would have said Oblivion but you've played it. That's probably the best choice for an easy and approachable RPG.

I think you should try Dragon Age as it's a little bit like Bauldur's Gate but boiled right down to the basics. You don't need to understand D&D to play Dragon Age.

Sticking with BioWare, Mass Effect is a decent RPG for story and character development but is much lighter on numbers end. You don't really need to pay that much attention to stats in Mass Effect aside from weapon damage.

The Fable series is probably the best in terms of being able to pick it up and play, regardless of skill level. They're pretty simple to play, but have beautifully designed semi-open worlds to explore, with some basic character interaction.

I can't stand JRPGs, so have nothing to offer in that area.

I think rpg's are a strange beast in this regard since the genre is so damn broad. Personally, part of the charm of the genre is to learn a new system. Most rpg's I feel kinda expect you muck around with the systems a bit. Try stuff, read - a lot.
Now I'm not saying this is the greatest game ever (however I do remember enjoying it a greal deal and it's available on a whole plethora of devices these days)....

- Final Fantasy X I think it's a snappy game that is excellent at communicating how you're performing. You can clearly see the turn order,and how different actions take a different amount of time - and where that puts you in the turn order. It heavily rewards utilizing enemy weaknesses etc...

I agree with this. While Persona 3 isn't the hardest JRPG by any means, the way it's constructed presents a lot of potential for you to screw yourself over if you're not prepared for a major boss battle when the next full moon occurs. Persona 4 by comparison is generally pretty kind by allowing you a little room to set your own pace for getting through dungeons and beating bosses (and also giving you full control over the other characters in your party).

That said, I'll agree that Super Mario RPG and the Paper Mario games are a pretty good entry point to this genre.

Want to learn party composition? Pokemon, Chrono Trigger. Those games are easy enough that you don't need to do anything the right way, but it's obvious when you put together a good team and start tearing shit up. Pokemon also makes it obvious when you're doing it wrong, while most RPGs tend to make you find out enemies' weaknesses by trial and error.

Want to learn single character builds? That's a hard call. Most games that are approachable aren't very balanced (Skyrim) and most games that are balanced aren't very approachable. Diablo 3 is somewhat almost balanced, and it's very easy, but there's so much going on with builds in that game that I don't know if it's a good place to learn. If Skyrim or one of the Souls games doesn't do it for you maybe try that.

I typically go for melee builds, so my stat-building is quite easy to manage I think, it always works out in some way.

If an RPG demands you have "the one" correct build it's a bad RPG in my opinion, they might as well have made your character "static" in that case.

My general advice is to focus your stats on just 3-4 basic skills at most (depending on the game of-course). For melee characters I put 80% of my points on things like strength/damage and vitality/health. I also stick to learning as few combat moves as possible, but largely because I'm not a technical gamer when it comes to RPGs. I like keeping it simple.

If I have a party of characters to manage, as in Wasteland 2, I tend to build specialists, especially a 'healer' and 'ranged' character. I always make sure each character can at least do basic healing, if possible in the game.

Partly this question is difficult to answer because there are a ton of different types of RPGs. Mastering something like a Skyrim isn't necessarily going to translate to a Persona game and visa-versa.

Having said that, if you are looking for a stat and mechanic heavy RPG to learn, you could look into the original Fallout games. Lots of character stats and perks that actually have a meaningful effect on how you play the game. It's good because you can definitely succeed with a variety of character builds, but unlike say, Diablo 3, there is enough difficulty that you still need to put thought into where you are putting your points. And while there are a lot of derived stats, the game fronts all the math, so you know exactly what the effect of your choices is going to be.

I think the older ones are on GoG right now.

I would say any Dragon Quest game. Covers all the basics and combat moves very quickly too.

@the_greg: I totally forgot that I've already played through the original Mass Effect trilogy, DA:O, DA2, and Inquisition, and KotOR...huh. Now I feel silly.

@shinofkod: I actually have the very first entry on NES...is that gonna be an OK place to start? I've found that some 8-bit RPG's can be a little esoteric.

@thebalch: Definitely, if you have access to SM RPG it's probably a more satisfying games than those other ones anyway. I think the fact that it's significant to your fiance is the best reason to play it though. :)

I'd skip Dragon Quest 1, that game is real real rough by modern standards. It also is from an era where the games expect you to have read the manual, so there isn't much teaching at all in game. Frankly there isn't much content in the game either by modern standards. Don't get me wrong, I loved the game back in the day, but it is a very rudimentary game compared to even late NES games like DQ 3.

I think the Final Fantasy games are generally much more new player friendly than DQ games tend to be. While I don't find DQ games hard, they expect you to know how to play them and tend to be rough in the beginning until you outlevel the enemies.

The first Costume Quest is simple enough not to be overwhelming, turn based so it is not mechanically challenging and easy enough not to scare newcomers.

The second one is a good game too, but more challenging...

I still think Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is the standard by which all traditional rpgs should be judged and it's not overly difficult; why not start with the best?