An RPG you can play
January 1, 2009
As much as I like them, I’ve always been slightly conflicted about the high level of abstraction in turn-based JRPGs.1 When the party discovers a treasure chest, a message box reveals what’s inside but the item itself remains unseen. During battle, the player selects ATTACK from a menu instead of pressing a button to swing the sword herself. The upshot is that I feel like I’m delegating gameplay activities to my characters and spending my time and energy on the more menial tasks like inventory management, equipment upgrades, and efficient leveling.
There is still pleasure in this, to be sure. At its best, turn-based combat offers a satisfying strategic challenge, and boosting a characters’ stats taps into our brains’ reward centers. On the other hand…well, there’s a reason they call it grinding. Progressing through a JRPG too often depends on sheer time investment more than anything else, and that can spoil the fun for me.
While developing Super Mario 64, Shigeru Miyamoto famously had his team perfect the gameplay details — physics, controls, animations, camera — before working on the levels themselves. In his view, gameplay is central to the experience, and playing the game should still be fun outside of the context provided by the designers. In many JRPGs, by contrast, the “game” part is a means to the end of getting to the next chapter. Grinding for experience and turning a page of a book are functionally equivalent, but the latter doesn’t suck away hours of your life.
One of Mother 3‘s minor brilliancies is that it deftly sidesteps this problem — if it is a problem — by eliminating the tedium of grinding with its music-based battle system.2 Not only did it allow me to avoid battling for experience, but the combat was so inherently pleasurable that I sometimes fought enemies for fun anyway.
Here’s the gist: If, during an attack, you hit the A button in time with the background music, you will begin a combo. Each successful hit adds to a unique riff that your characters “play” along with the song — Kumatora shreds on an electric guitar, while Duster slaps out bass solos. Music notes appear and spin around the enemy as your attack continues, and a crowd cheers if you manage to strike sixteen times in a row (the maximum). A lengthy combo can deal two to three times the damage of a single strike and will handily defeat higher-level enemies.
There are two wonderful things about this system. The first is that the uninterested can completely ignore it. The game will take longer to finish, of course — perhaps significantly so, as I imagine you’d need to be several levels higher. Still, aside from a brief NPC explanation early on (and the subtle music note on the attack icon), it’s largely invisible.
The second is that the rhythm battle system is surprisingly deep. It’s not Rock Band, but neither are 16-hit combos easy to come by. Don’t take my word for it, though — that’s where we’re headed next.
- I previously wrote about this, or something like it, in “The right kind of hard.”
- I mentioned this battle system on Michael Abbott’s year-end podcast, wherein I named Mother 3 my game of the year.
9 comments
The system sounds like a very workable one, and makes some other attempts at similar active-battle systems (Looking at you FFVIII) look rather… impotent in comparison.
My interest in Mother 3 is growing exponentially… I now at least have a DS, maybe I’ll invest in a flasher card…
by Ben Abraham on January 1, 2009 at 11:29 pm #
“My interest in Mother 3 is growing exponentially…”
This. I guess it’s time to embrace a less grindy RPG to work up my endurance to play the new Persona.
by the daniel on January 2, 2009 at 3:20 pm #
Unfortunately, I have yet to play Mother 3. It’s a lot of a hassle to download the game on a flashcard just to play the game, but somehow, I know it it’s going to worth all the trouble.
The battle system does seem to remind me of PSP’s Patapon. Is it similar, or am I completely off with this analogy?
by Angelo on January 3, 2009 at 4:41 pm #
To be fair, though, this battle system is not too new. The earliest JRPG I know of that used timed button presses to augment attacks was Super Mario RPG, and this system was further improved upon in the Paper Mario series and the Gameboy Advance/DS Mario & Luigi RPGs. Legend of Dragoon had a limited version of it as well. MOTHER 3′s battle system is novel, however, in that one must time their strikes with the background music itself. It was very interesting, to say the least.
But it still feels a tad abstract, in my book, and does not address the issue of the grind itself, even if it does make things more engaging and pleasurable. But I wholeheartedly agree that this is the way things will (and must) progress for the JRPG. Combat can still be turn based, but the player should still be able to choose to be an active participant to some extent. It’s a hard balance to establish, but when done right, it feels fresh and exciting. The old plain turn-based method, in contrast, is not aging well, at least to me.
by The Unknown on January 4, 2009 at 4:30 pm #
I’m glad people are getting interested in trying Mother 3! I should say that, if at all possible, you should play on real hardware; otherwise, it’s likely that emulation delays will make the battle system I’m describing here useless to you!
Angelo, I’ve not played Patapon, but from what I understand it sounds like a similar idea.
MOTHER 3’s battle system is novel, however, in that one must time their strikes with the background music itself.
For me, that’s enough. :-) I see a huge difference between “hit the button at the right time” and “hit the button in time with the music.”
But it still feels a tad abstract, in my book, and does not address the issue of the grind itself, even if it does make things more engaging and pleasurable.
I’ll grant that it feels abstract (though as I said in the first paragraph, I think that problem is endemic to JRPGs in general). However, I disagree that the battle system doesn’t address the grinding problem — that’s the very reason I like it so much. Battles are less tedious, and if you’re good at the combos it’s rarely (if ever) necessary to go out of your way to gain more experience.
by Dan Bruno on January 4, 2009 at 10:05 pm #
In my eyes, the grind becomes less tedious, but at some points, it is still a grind. Then again, I’ve had the sinking suspicion for a while now that the concept of leveling itself in its current state may be the problem, but I have yet to stumble upon a system that trumps it or offers a solution in an RPG setting. So I guess that it will have to do until then.
Regardless, I will always enjoy my beloved JRPGs. The good ones, anyway. =)
by The Unknown on January 5, 2009 at 12:59 pm #
Dan,
I got the translation setup through emulation, and have been trying to figure out when to hit the attack buttons. I tried just tapping it in time with the music, hitting it with the upbeats, the downbeats, on the rests..and nothing. The taps SEEM to be immediate upon pressing the emulator key corresponding to the A button, but I’m not seeing combos (although, I did see something that LOOKED like a combo in the “you got 2 hits” message when I was tapping the A button mercilessly in time with all fo the beats int he music). I’ll keep trying, because this sort of secret system really appeals to the musician in me.
The game itself, wow. I’ve NEVER been this invested in the GBA-style sprites before. They’re obviously pixels and I find the way the artists and animators express the rather complicated story and emotions with simplistic art tools surprisingly effective. The events in the first part of the story, before the scene at the graveyard, are really intense, and emotional. I have young chilredn, and I could relate to the character’s emotional response very well. The mood of the piece, including the fire, then rain, plus the ASTOUNDINGLY good music, all come together to create such a good mood. I actually was upset at the game when it tried being lighthearted again after the dark events in the early part.
I’m just about to head out to find the kids in the game, so I look forward to more and more story connection and emotional resonance. Thanks for posting so much about the game, and talking it up on the Confab. GREAT game.
by Rob on January 11, 2009 at 1:24 am #
Rob: Glad you’re enjoying Mother 3 so far! Without giving too much away, the mechanics of the rhythm battle system will be made clear in the next hour or so. I’m working on another post right now, with examples, so there’ll be more to read here soon as well. Good luck!
Regarding the jarring lightheartedness: You’re definitely not the only one with that reaction, though I personally didn’t mind the contrast. Most of my Mother 3 posts are laden with spoilers, but after you finish the game you might like to delve into the archives for more on that topic.
by Dan Bruno on January 11, 2009 at 1:22 pm #
You are given the option, if playing Starmen.net’s (and I accredit them simply because I see that it was the epicenter of a lot of the work to start this project off, what with Pk Siege and so on) translation patch, to play in ‘Hard Mode’, where-in you essentially NEED to possess the means to successfully 16-combo or you will fail. This is due to the fact that all the enemies have been given x2 HP and battles will be a chore otherwise.
by Meh on July 26, 2009 at 2:31 pm #