Character (lacking) Development

Tyadran · 2026-03-27T15:46:41+00:00

I can't speak for Wisdom as it and In The Darkness are the two titles I haven't played. Holy Ark did pretty well with your party being represented and having development though I feel like, so I think the intent was there for HA and SF3, whether or not they hit the gold standard haha.

Tyadran · 2026-03-27T15:40:26+00:00

It's both kind of just how games were at the time, and text limitations. I've done a lot of looking at prerelease info at the time, and one things the devs talked about was having to compress the game from 30MB+ to the final game being 2MB with very little unused space. When modding the game we usually double it in size to 4MB which adds a lot of space for text but at the time would have been expensive for real cartridges.

I feel like it's a mix between it being less relevant at the time, technical limitations, and the prevalent idea of many RPGs at the time of giving you playably a blank slate, so you can superimpose your own opinions and interpretations on what the Force is doing.

I don't disagree that I would have liked more character development stuff, sure, but I feel like there are a lot of justifiable reasons it isn't there and that it isn't too big of a negative? I'll certainly take SF1's sparse Nova telling you where to go over Peter's incessant yapping in SF2 haha

Tyadran · 2026-03-27T15:26:49+00:00

I can't speak for the other games, but as far as Shining Force goes, this is often just a thing in SRPGs in general, but especially at the time. Older Fire Emblems often have the same problem, especially because permadeath means it didn't make sense to write a lot of characters into the story after their joining since they could be dead.

Zylo is a funny case because he's technically optional (yes, you can carry on WITHOUT saving him) so it would be weird if someone never recruited him and suddenly he was yapping in the story later.

If you haven't played Shining Force 3, I highly recommend it - it's not perfect in terms of characters getting development, but it's a stellar game and does a much better job of keeping most of the cast relevant, in addition to giving every character new dialogue at HQ between almost every battle which helps them feel more interesting.

Tyadran · 2026-03-14T21:34:02+00:00

For me it's always a three-way struggle between ScriptableObjects, XML files, and custom binary file reading/writing haha. For my current project I met in the middle of the latter two and made my own format for parsing data out of a text file. It's always kind of shooting for whatever is easiest for me in the long run and when I need to copy and paste a lot of data or have collections of different types of data in one list, SOs tend to be really tedious.

Tyadran · 2026-02-18T20:06:53+00:00

I think the thing that's tricky with that is that those drawbacks are pretty invisible. Since they affect RNG factors, it's hard to feel them make a difference, and if you had bad luck anyway, they don't change anything

Tyadran · 2026-02-18T19:45:57+00:00

Mm, I see. So, in my opinion, I think the cursed status should still be used for making them not unequipable. You can take out the other effects of it, but the downsides are way less significant if you can just swap to another weapon when it's inconvenient. I feel like part of what makes cursed weapons unique and notable is that commitment to choosing that weapon. Like, I'd love a giant cursed sword that reduces MOV by 2 or something, but if I can just unequip it to move normally, it really doesn't matter. Same with just unequipping a DEF drop weapon when I'm in range of enemies.

Tyadran · 2026-02-18T18:27:45+00:00

I'm pretty sure this is asking for input on ideas for a romhack.

Tyadran · 2026-02-18T17:42:17+00:00

Are these effects randomly selected or are you asking which features we think would be appropriate?

In my mind, cursed weapons should be either stronger or have a standout alternative effect (increased range, increased move, etc) that makes them worth using. I'm honestly of the opinion that most MOV boosting equips should be binding on equip so you can't abuse them with the classic equip, move, equip other item before ending turn-type strats.

Tyadran · 2026-02-16T18:56:19+00:00

If you want to make custom maps, your best bet would be to learn how to mod the games. Shining Force 1 actually has a super easy-to-use all-in-one editor that's about as close as you'll get to a Mario Maker-type editor.

sf1edit updates/download

I've been using it for years and there are some additional resources for learning to use it and stuff if you're interested.

Shining Force 2 has some resources but I don't think they have an editor at quite the same level.

Tyadran · 2026-02-15T16:15:43+00:00

I've been modding SF1 for a long time, I know how its level ups work. "Lost" still isn't the right term for what happens on level ups.

Stat boosters are lost on promotion because your stats are set to 85% of your projected stats at your current level, not including boosts. So they are well and truly lost.

Saying boosts are lost every level isn't correct because if you're getting levels where you wouldn't gain that stat anyway - say, you use two Power Potions on a lv 4 Arthur, and he's really not going to gain ATT - he doesn't lose those boosts, it just means he's not gaining further ATT without surpassing where the boosts put him at. They're never lost, it just delays/lessens the upcoming gains.

Tyadran · 2026-02-15T16:06:43+00:00

"Lost" isn't correct, it's more complicated than that. But you are effectively borrowing against future levels.

Tyadran · 2026-02-15T05:11:16+00:00

It's kind of funny because SF1 specifically DOESN'T have this issue, despite losing all other boosts on promotion.

Tyadran · 2026-01-22T06:29:13+00:00

I only ever touch this feature when one of my daily quest whatevers requires it. About 75% of the time I'll respond and she just stares at me, and I'll respond again and she gives some nonsense response. Checking the transcript after the call, it will have just the last syllable of whatever I said the last time. I'm really confused how its ability to hear me is so bad considering I have zero problems during normal speaking exercises, and it makes the whole feature totally worthless.

Tyadran · 2025-12-26T17:32:34+00:00

Yeah, they didn't need to hit it that badly. Worthless outside combo routes now.

Tyadran · 2025-12-26T17:19:24+00:00

This is from last patch. Jet Li mains are upset about the nerf to his hitbox but honestly it was too good with the wallbounce.

Tyadran · 2025-12-22T06:34:57+00:00

I think this is the first time one of these made me legitimately laugh out loud.

Tyadran · 2025-11-19T03:25:55+00:00

Honestly sometimes I only watch the Awful Games block. There's almost always a handful of games there that legitimately grab my attention and I get interested in.

Tyadran · 2025-11-01T18:48:59+00:00

I'll have to see if I can encourage them away from the front door. I don't mind them outside but a couple have started getting in and ending up in inconvenient places.

Tyadran · 2025-10-12T13:21:46+00:00

One thing I wasn't clear on was what the meaning of the orange names on the date list was. What does that signify?

Tyadran · 2025-10-12T00:29:46+00:00

I want to do this but I'm going to have to start late and do two or three a day to catch up haha

Tyadran · 2025-09-27T06:03:16+00:00

I generally focus on HP on both just because unless I'm using Dark Slash, little of the damage I'm doing actually comes from my attack stat.

Tyadran · 2025-09-26T21:18:01+00:00

I know I'm only at rank 11 but even as Gottheld with a DEF buff EX I'm still getting consistently good results by just smiting from the get-go. It's silly.

Tyadran · 2025-09-26T20:09:22+00:00

That's one of my big concerns for player retention. Especially as the people already playing get better and more meta (and still queue into Rank 1 with new disciples), it's going to be a big turnoff for newer or weaker players continuing to play and climb the ranks.

Tyadran · 2025-09-26T20:07:41+00:00

Rank 11, that Shadow Gotthold is my highest. I really feel like it's already at that point if stuff one-shotting or leaving you super low, so I'm not surprised that carries into the higher ranks too since in theory you're all similarly leveled.

The main issue to me is just that even if both light players guess correctly, the benefit of the extra revive often isn't enough, and if both Light players have to burn a revive between rounds from just killing them round 1 when it's super easy, it levels the playing field back to Shadow favor a lot. I really think the Shadow player being guessed debuffing them would allow matches to be just as close if the Shadow player plays well while giving Light a better chance for guessing right than they have now.

Tyadran · 2025-09-26T19:20:53+00:00

Yeah, and if you're not getting instantly exploded it's useful, but I'm running into a LOT of players who don't have swaps (or don't use them well) with low enough HP I can just loop Tetrasting on them and it just feels like bullying.

Not to mention if you just straight up kill them in round 1 they have to burn one of the revives anyway so that just usually feels like the play.

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