Yhynens

@(Unverified) Oh yeah, Populous! Totally forgot about those games.

@(Unverified) I agree with you there, especially on the population front. It's definitely a very different feel from an RPG where your biggest parties are usually the size of your starting group in DF. But there aren't really ANY games where you control characters indirectly like you do in DF. (All I can come up with is Actraiser's peasants... Maybe AI teams in action RPGs. Ogre Battle, but not really.) The element comes from sim games, but they don't have characters (specifically statted characters) in the way that DF does, which is why I think it's a good fusion between sims and RPGs. I definitely see where you're coming from for leaning toward the sim side of things, though.

Also, you don't ONLY control the dwarves indirectly; you can give direct orders to your militia dwarves. But the granularity of the order is basically the same as strategy games: Group X, Kill Y. So it's still a valid point.

@GiantGamer Yeah, but a lot of modern roguelikes forego that element entirely, so I can see why it's not covered here. He can't really cover every aspect of the genre, after all.

I think the thing that was neatest about food was that in Nethack what really drives you down into deeper levels of the dungeon is the need to feed. I'm not really sure that a situation like what you're explaining ever even happens in Nethack--my experience with other roguelikes is pretty limited, though. Exploring those side rooms usually results in more enemies which is more food--at least in Nethack, you're never really directly penalized for exploring, unless you run into bad news. You'd be just as likely to run into more food exploring sideways as if you were progressing downwards, assuming you're going to places you haven't already explored.

@(Unverified) Honestly, I would argue that Desktop Dungeons is far less an RPG than Dwarfort. In Dwarfort you have a party that you build by choosing their stats and starting equipment, and then they gain experience on those stats consistently and also have HP (even if it is split up amongst about a zillion different pieces of the body.) You don't get to choose the stats of migrant dwarves, but you do effectively get to decide what they're going to train in. In Desktop Dungeons you have stats, but the stats are basically just an abstraction to facilitate the puzzle aspects of the game.
The only thing that makes Dwarfort less of an RPG is that the goal isn't to accomplish anything, really, it's just to not die for as long as you can. There also are, in a way, "final bosses" to fight. On the other hand, I would say that it really isn't a roguelike, at least not by the stipulations you laid out. The terrain and geology is randomly generated, yes, but it takes a really long time to set up your embark party and even when you're new to the game it can take a good ten or twelve hours before your fort finally dies. I'd say Dwarfort is a really good hybrid of sim game and RPG; it even has an RPG mode built right into the game. I'd actually like to hear what aspects of it you think make it less of an RPG and more something else.

Other than that, good article. I look forward to seeing more from you.

I'm really (hint: not really) hoping this comes full circle and they add Minecraft themed Lego sets into Minecraft.

@Eniko I like the costumes usually, but I don't really agree with it as pay DLC. They're excellent as alternative endgame sidequest rewards when you don't really need more money or more items, since you're, you know, at the end of the game. I suppose costume DLC's also a working model for Riot Games. I kind of wonder how much revenue LoL gets solely off of its costumes, really... Must be enough to at least justify them continuing to produce costumes.

@(Unverified) Except for Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Dragon Quest VIII and IX, Type-0, and if you're a teenage girl, Kingdom Hearts. Though after what they did to the Mana series I was basically ready to destroy Squenix, too, I have to at least give credit where credit is due and say they still do some pretty good content.

Gave up on writing poorly researched articles and decided to just go full satire, huh? Well, at least this is an improvement over your other work.

By the way, Vesperia does everything you said in the post, doesn't it? I kind of figured the Assassin's Creed costume was inspired by Bamco's success with bullcrap like Hatsune Miku and Code Geass costumes. Well, that was Tales of Graces, but Didn't Vesperia PS3 have something like that too...? I can't really remember.

@(Unverified) Yes, I'm certainly aware of that. Do you think playing for 30-60 minutes actually allowed you to put down the nostalgia goggles? If you really want to critique whether or not they hold up, you should at least get to the part of the game that matters for whether or not they hold up--in most RPGs, ideally at least the second dungeon, so the mechanics of most of the games can start to become apparent, alongside the dialogue and story elements. All you're getting an objective look at in thirty minutes is the very beginning of these games. You're only looking at the setup, and ignoring things like narrative arc, battle mechanics, characterization of people who don't even show up until later, and even later characterization of people you start the game with. I don't deny you have memories of all that, but I do believe you can't judge it objectively in the current time without actually playing through it again. If you want to be unbiased, that's great, but the first thirty minutes of a game isn't enough to really look at the whole thing through unbiased eyes.

@KingRanger Like I said in my other post, even if he spent a full hour with it, it wouldn't be enough time to really gauge how good the game actually is. You can't play ANY rpg for an hour and make a fair opinion of the quality of the game, let alone one that's (intentionally) slow paced. Suikoden at 15-20 hours is about as short as RPGs come. Would you say watching the first 20 minutes of a film, even if you'd seen it in the past, really entitles you to say whether the film is dated or not? And that's a full sixth of a two hour movie. An hour is usually less than one twentieth of an RPG! I wouldn't expect him to fully play every game he has to write about, but he should at least play more than this.