Click this link sponsr.is/DesignDoc and use my code DESIGNDOC to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. That’s 25% your first month or your first year, depending on the subscription you choose.

"Potential: Misogynist" is the single most insane phrase I've heard all day

this is the first Design Doc video I'm watching after actually biting the bullet and starting to do gamedev part-time!

19:50 "With the power of misogyny, I have become unstoppable!"

"Mario Species and Luigi" was really funny thing you slipped in there.

"A dice roll may fail you, but a cliff will not" are powerful words to live by.

True power is Yu-Gi-Oh season 1 when you can make up whatever rules you want on terrain bonuses

Every time I see your videos, I end up with a new list of game that I don't have time to try

"...Or a Stealth Rock comes flying in from The Expanse." I see what you did there, beltalowda.

I know Castform isn’t that good, but the buddy is my favorite Pokémon, and I love when they get a shout out at all.

Valkyria Chronicles: Cannot forget that one guy who goes "Who's a sexy tank" when beside one.

Saw Megaman.exe and CAME RUNNING

An unfortunate trait of Battle Network and its spiritual successor Star Force, is that a lot of its final bosses do not interact with the field at all, as they're just floating in the air. So if you've built your strategy around some sort of field combo, like grass panels and fire attacks, you're out of luck.

I love seeing so many of my favorite games all in one video. Megaman Battle Network, Steamworld Heist, Unicorn Overlord, Valkyria Chronicles... I feel so seen here.

In Magical Starsign you had planets moving and if the stars aligned (literally) you'd deal more damage with the respectice element...I think, it's been like 15 years since i've played it

RE: Chrono Cross's field mechanic. A lot of people don't know you can cancel your attack and end a turn early, switching to another one of your party members. If you want to summon, you need to attack less and switch more, giving the enemies less chance to cast spells to screw it up. If you find yourself going into the negatives, that's why.

Love the Valkyria Chronicles mention! Such a hidden gem of a series

the thumbnail makes it look like they're gonna fight and that's amusing to me for what a mismatch is, probably not in the direction a lot of people would expect it to be

Xenoblade X had a boss enemy located in a cave. But the location of it is hovering over a pit of lava, and you can only stand on the pillars over the lava. It was a very difficult boss because the AI teammates keep falling into the lava. It was certainly a memorable fight.

You should definitely do a video on card games. I say this because of my new favorite game, WildFrost, but I do think it would be interesting. You could go over how games with deck-building systems work or how games can make card game modes of themselves. Bloons TD Battles has a very unique card game mode that completely changes how you play the game. You could go over how pokemon made an actual card game... I think it could be fun

Mario and Rabids: Sparks of hope makes terrain interesting by letting you freely roam a certain area, even getting in bonus damage on some enemies if they are in range

Pokemon and MMBN's robust competitive scenes makes them an excellent suggestion for any turn-based-combat aficionados to research, as they're basically status conditions and therefore are not that hard to implement. Good stuff as always!

Fire Emblem plays with terrain a lot too, since it's a turn based tactic JRPG. Basically the games give you certain tiles that heal, damage or give specific buffs and debuffs to whoever might be standing on or near them, be it your units or the enemy ones. FE10 has healing bushes that heal for 10% of a unit's HP if a unit stands on it, healing jars in an early map that heal 20% for up to four units surrounding it, etc., with bushes also granting avoid bonuses, making them essential spots to take control over. But some terrain ends up limiting the movement of your units, making them obstacles to reach an objective instead, despite the bonuses they may confer. Rafiel, for example, cannot traverse bushes when he's transformed, making his ability to make up to 4 units move twice in a turn mute if you transform him at the wrong time and place. Depending on the game, flying units can bypass most obstacles that reduce or prevent movement, given the fact they fly above them, but at the same they will not enjoy the bonuses these tiles grant as a trade of (though it also means they will not suffer penalties or take damage for tiles that debuff or set your units aflame either). Similarly, units that attack with magic will not have their Hit rate affected if an enemy receives terrain bonus for avoid and defense, but they will still receive the bonuses if they are the ones standing on them. Fire Emblem has always played with terrain that affects allies and foes alike, requiring the player to think about how they can remove the enemy unit from those points that grant them the advantage or lure the enemies into tiles that debuffs and/or damages them.

The Disgaea series make terrain an integral part of how you tackle a map. Like everything else in the game it is meant to be thoroughly abused. Some map effect can be used to to effectively make your unit invincible while you chip away at monsters that you boosted to get more exp.

Unicorn Overlord and MMBN in the same video I’m dreaming. Love their battle systems so much

Larian Studios previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 had even more environment interaction. I can only refer to Electrified Cursed Blood Cloud. So metal.

Terrain effects are extremely fun to use. Fe for example the developers hiding one tile of tree or something can basically swing the game around in your favor and make a high dodge unit a dodge machine. Engage wise corrin and camilia being able to on base change the terrain is actually very cool for getting ready for a counter attack Pokemon has some interesting terrain boosts. Each weather gives those nice bonuses to specific mons but it is a double edged sword sometimes like sunny day and rain dance as solar beam is faster but fire moves are stronger same with water moves being better but thunder always hits. It's pretty good design

This was neat. I clicked into this expecting a discussion of aesthetics and immersion and instead learned interesting things about the mechanical aspects of settings.

EBF5's weather are just like Pokémon's, but on steroids. Everyone gets a stack wet/chill/dry. Random chance of getting doomed (ticks down until it instantly kills you). Random chance of extra turn. Everyone gets a debuff protection. Huge debuff on defensive stats to everyone. Huge buff to offensive stats to everyone. There are SO many, and they're SO fun! Some bosses are extra tough to deal with because of weather, and having a summon to override it with a favorable one is how I beat most bosses on Epic difficulty. Definitely my favorite "mix up" for JRPG battles

finally for being the first video to show me wut Steamworld Heist is actually like to play cuz wow does that look appealing to me

pokemon cinquest has really nice terrain mechanics

Bahamut lagoon is an old Rpg from the last days of the SNES in 1996. Its various types of terrain that could do things like slow block movement, which is effected each squad has a dragon which can fly but isn't directly controlled, heal all units, do damage. You also, you, and your enemies can effect the terrain in various ways such as destroying walls with lightning to open up the map, setting a forest on fire, destroying bridge an enemy in on and dropping them into the void, curing poisonous swamp etc.

I remember Disgaea having a very fun mechanic about changing the color of certain terrain to cause damage to enemies, or accidentally damage your own units with the same color change. I'd talk about it but haven't played Disgaea in so long I don't quite remember.

I don't know if this counts but in The World Ends with you for the DS, you get to control both characters in 2 different screens, up screen with D-pad (or buttons) and bottom screen with the stylus. I really like that because you can make combos on the up screen that leads to a powerful duo attack. Also there is an Interesting gimmick that the pins and clothes you use depends on what's the trend in that section, if is trend you get bonus stats, if not you don't. But if you fight enough Noises you can make everything you're using a trend and get those bonuses.

Tales of the Abyss had the "Field of Fonons" mechanic - casting multiple spells of the same element creates a glowing circle colored with that element, and then if a character stands in the field and uses a special move, the special move gets upgraded into a stronger elemental attack. And since it's a Tales game and characters are free to run around the battlefield, setting up that positioning actually takes some work and makes for interesting tactics.

Megaman battle network mention! ❤🎉

I've never seen a video so badly want to talk about Disgaea without having the confidence to talk about Disgaea. Impressive!

Super Robot Wars has a lot of terrain that is mostly subtle but that plays into the mecha concept of the series. Terrain is in four categories: land, sky, water, and space, and each has their own unique mechanics. Land lets you get certain bonuses like increased defense or the ability to get healing or EN resupplied, but it also requires you take into account that it might impact mobility compared to flying, as you might normally expect. Water has a mechanic where it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of beam-type weaponry. What's extra interesting about how Super Robot Wars does it is that each mecha, pilot, and weapon has their own terrain ratings (in a lot of games pilots don't have terrain ratings because most of them are unit-locked but in OG games most of the roster can swap between units so it makes sense for them to have ratings), where some perform better in different types of terrain. Some, like the Getter Robo, can switch their terrain specialty on the fly, some you might be able to specifically alter a loadout before a map (like games with Nadesico, the Aestivalis has 0G, Flight and Ground frames - that are mostly the same, except the Flight is more fragile than the 0G and Ground frames, and the 0G is only good in space or water terrain) and some you need option parts to use well. It can get interesting in that when you have the options you might choose to do weird things when the tactics call for it. If there are a lot of enemies loaded out with beam weaponry, you may choose to dive your units under the water even if they have bad terrain ratings there, because it's a better defensive option. You might choose to give an option part for a unit with bad space performance even if it has a configuration to use in space if the ground-based variant is stronger (Scopedog). Sometimes there even are unique animations based on different terrain ratings like Dai-Guard being able to use its famous "rocket punch" if it uses Drill Arm while on the ground against an aerial enemy. Terrain in Super Robot Wars is not huge as a gameplay mechanic - at most it's like a 10% modifier to accuracy or evasion (in a game with Spirit Commands) but it puts in a lot of work to really drive home the feel of mecha anime.

When I think of neat battlefields in RPGs, Dragon Ball Fusions is a game that instantly springs to mind. Hitting enemies hard enough makes them rocket across the field, and you enable follow-up attacks by hitting the enemy in the direction of a party member. You can also ricochet them off walls.

I saw the title, and immediately thought of BG3. My current run is taking an emphasis on the specific mechanics of the game, particularly surfaces. And oh man is Spike Growth nutty.

I honestly thought this was gonna be about coliseum/arena side modes in RPGs. This is much more interesting, and something I've considered before for my own ideas, but never been sure how to make it worthwhile and not an annoyance.

battle network is legit the coolest battle system ive ever fucking seen. absolutely genius design

19:30 'Everyone is different. No two people are the same. Some people are about to be run over. Frankie has about five seconds.' The 4th and 5th Wild Arms games did something similar to Paper Mario where each fight generates a random set of 7-8 hexagons that characters move between. Elemental magic is much weaker if you don't use it atop an elemental ley Hex. Buffs, ailments and debuffs only apply to that hex, so you can move off or onto it. Characters provide buffs to each other when they're together on the same hex, but that allows enemies to attack you both at once, and vice versa. Characters must also be on the same hex to use their combo attacks, and there are spells that specifically move allies or enemies around to different spots. This system had a lot of potential and I've always felt it could have been tapped into more with a 6th proper game.

This is one of my favorite channels. I love learning more about games and some of this is even workable into my writing, book style writing. Keep up the great work!

The Battle Network series have a bit more with terrain, like the unbreakable Metal Panels that doubles the power of electric moves, Holy panels which halves all damage for someone standing on it, heck, even holes had their uses like several powerful chips using the nearest hole in front of Megaman as targets or the Snake chip which shoots out homing snakes out of holes on your field, famous for being the bullying tool of Gutsman who uses the Geddon chip, a chip that breaks every panel. There are also mechanics specifically used to mitigate the negative effects of terrain, the Floatshoes that disable most negative panels like the poisonous swamp panel or lava panel and the Airshoes which lets you walk on hole panels

Seeing the Trails clip at the beginning actually sent me for a few seconds. I've been watching for years, and I think that was the first time I saw a Trails clip in one of your videos! I'd love for a video on world-building with Trails as the center piece, tho talking about the series without going into at least medium spoilers seems tough...

Ground mechanics instantly make me think of Civilization. It's not an RPG, but it applies many core themes/mechanics that can come from certain. Different terrains have different outputs (Desserts and tundra produce less food, mountains are impassable, etc.). But it goes beyond those ideas, too. Some civilizations do better in "poor" environments than others, such as Canada in tundras or Mali in deserts. However, the game takes the mechanics terrain further, integrating it into combat and movement. Cliffs, for instance, can be a strategic advantage, reducing movement unless you have levelled up units. Rivers not only impede movement but also weaken non-ranged attacks, adding a layer of strategy. On the other hand, hills slow movement but give an advantage to combatants atop them, and forests can be a tactical hindrance, slowing travel and impeding escapes/retreats. Terrain even changes based on the environment and is not static. As climate change increases, low-laying land can flood and become un-usable, droughts and tornados can hit plains, volcanos can destroy buildings but supply nutrients for farming, and rivers can flood, causing harm to people and infrastructure but also allowing for enhanced crop yields and the ability to generate power through water mills and hydroelectric dams. If fruitful areas get nuked, they can become ruined by nuclear fallout.

Since I do this near every applicaple video... The game idea I have would put monsters on the field like in Chrono Trigger, and starting an encounter would draw hexes on the field, since I wanted the game to have characters able to walk around, adding a tactical element in aiming attacks that CT didn't. There'd also be obstacles and verticals depending on where the fight's happening.

16:41 one step from Eden does this exact same thing, on top of being a card slinger. One of my favorite games I’ve played recently 🥰

I really like the additional bonus we get from terain such as psychic terrain shuts down priority moves and boosts expanding force. Or electric terain keeps everyone awake and they can't fall asleep.

Seeing Phantom Brave is neat. I was gonna mention it’s AoE magic and attacks and how they affects 3D areas of the map.

I absolutely love what Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth did with the combat arena, specifically IW, as it even makes your party members a hazardous part of the environment or a dangerous partner for a team up attack if close enough. Not to mention the ability to walk up to and pick up various objects in the environment to use as weapons. It all adds up to an incredibly engaging battle system that keeps even basic fights interesting.

The Light and Shadow environmental mechanics found in Eternal Sonata are also a really interesting complication! Really fun impacts on gameplay and strategy.

Not mentioned by name but I saw some Phantom Brave footage in here, let's gooo.

"...full of koopas and toads and all KINDS of Mario speciesandLuigi." I died. What even ARE the Marios?

6:48 I think the system being haphazard works in it's favor. Different weather isn't just "buff one type nerf another". It's like yeah, fire type Pokémon would be weaker in the rain obviously. Of course fighting on a hailstorm would hurt, and some Pokémon are more ready for these scenarios than others. I think it's a great lesson to not apporach mechanics like this as "Every type has its own advantageous weather", but moreso "outside factors affect the battle and some characters are more ready than others"

2:44 idk why, but this whole sentence is just hilarious to me. I think it’s how you just tacked Luigi to the end

I would like to mention of a hidden gem, Eternal Sonata. The game has the arena have light and dark areas, ex: under the sunshine or in the shades. These two areas affect the available movesets for team members and even the attributes of the enemies. I had so much fun even just the demo only!

When I saw the title, I thought you were going to talk about in-game arena/colosseum battles. Very interesting video as usual but with two very important mechanics missing: positioning (especiallly in T-RPGs) and terrain changes (burning a forest, freezing a river, etc.)

project x zone 2 has some unique terrain properties, one place you visit early on has a poison swamp that will deal damage to both friendly and enemy units (unless they can fly(but that’s enemy units only)), others have certain hazards or healing spots that will heal both friendly and enemy units. the level’s geometry also has an effect on how a unit can move (cause it’s grid based movement), one map may just be a flat space, while another could have various obstacles that need to be destroyed, or different levels of elevation

Bro left Disgaea out for engagement 😂 - nice video (:

FFT did this pretty well. I can't wait for the remaster...

Honestly, I think FF13 deserves more credit- (responding to the comment about "knowing the solution and just doing it again and again.") Each chapter making you use different party members means it can present different challenges each chapter- and within that chapter, you're going to be swapping paradigms out for a lot of battles, especially when you encounter enemies that force you to question your current strategies. (The ranking system also encourages players to try and excel in battle rather than do the bare minimum too- if you get a low star ranking after a fight, it might push you to ask yourself what you're doing wrong, prompting you to rethink your strategy.) I think FF13-2 is more problematic when it comes to doing the same thing over and over again. 13 is a genuinely difficult game, and that forces you to REALLY think about your options and plan ahead for each battle- an average enemy can feel like a boss fight. But in FF13-2, everything feels like it's made of paper. You can just buff yourself and spam ruinga without thinking. The ranking system is far less refined too, and can either feel unfair in poorly ranking you, or too generous, without the player having any real takeaway from it. Still fun and snappy of course, but it fits that feeling of "Just blow things up, you already know what to do."

That potential mechanic in Valkyria Chronicles sounds cool. I really like seeing little stuff like bonuses and technical playing into characters personalities in videogames, like how some characters in Samurai Showdown have different reactions to killing attacks like horror, remorse, or moving on. Makes me think of Disgaea 4's Legendary Tree giving units buffs based on relationships they made.

Final Fantasy Tactics for the PS1 had some interesting terrain mechanics. In water you would move less spaces, differences in height were actually important since your characters could only jump a set number of spaces. Archers in higher terrain would deal a lot of damage to the units down below. Terrain could obstruct your attacks (for example throwing weapons). There was even a class that could use the battle's terrain to produce different effects, the Geomancer. I'm really surprised that you didn't talk about it. For a game of that era it had very interesting mechanics. I think it deserved a place.

An interesting one for me is yokai watch 3’s 3x3 grid based combat. Its a real time grid based combat system (similar to mega man battle network) where you can chain different yokai, have yokai in front to protect the weaker ones, there are different abilities that effect terrain and linked yokai, and when there are terrain hazards you have to be careful with the path you take when moving around your yokai. I’d really recommend it! It’s one of my favorite 3ds games.

Warframe is a pretty good example of how terrain can be used in a shooter. Because it was originally designed as a stealth game, there are a lot of places that you can go duck into cover in or traverse the map unseen. Because you interact with the environments difference from how your enemies do, you can get rather clever with your movements early in the game. For example, you can use a water jet from a broken pipe to give yourself a quick elevation boost wow your enemies might have to take the stairs or ride underneath a zipline

It might not be a blown out RPG, but League of Legends feature bushes where you can hide, 6 different dragon effects that take place to modify the map mid game, and also boosts to your team if you manage to beat some epic monsters. Some champions also benefit from having terrain close, like pushing and stunning an opponent against the wall or jumping over a wall to hide and escape (or attack and ambush).

Love your videos. I use them to help spice up my ttrpg.

Thank you for supporting my RPG 🙏

The title had me thinking that this was going to cover gladiatorial sequences in RPGs such as fighting in the arena in Final Fantasy VII's Golden Saucer. That might make for a good video as well.

Maybe it’s been done, but I think it would be cool if there was an rpg where you walk through a dungeon normally. But when you trigger a combat encounter, the area turns into a grid-based battlefield with terrain that varies depending on where you were when you encountered the enemy

This reminds me to old game called Mines of Titan, a turn based RPG with futuristic theme. The battle field is different for each battle (well maybe except for final one) making each battle unique. What defines the field is where you encounter enemies which is random. Another game worth mentioning is Disgaea. It looks like typical turn based RPG however most fields have colored tiles with certain perks. This could give advantage or disadvantage to player or enemy or even both. Player could remove these tiles by destroying respective colored pyramids but it has great side effect.

Sand Storm in Pokémon also boosts Rock-Type Pokémon's Special Defense by 50%

What I want to know is why so many humanoid boss fights just have flat arenas in this day of age. I mean, big ol monsters, sure, they need a bit of space to move around, but how cool it would be if a boss around player-size was just as capable of platforming as the player. You would think that we'd have evolved past basic AI navigation by this point. And bosses jumping to some out-of-reach spot for a sequence of projectiles doesn't count.

I like the terrain mechanics of Fossil Fighters (at least the first 2 games). In 1, the RPG combat splits the grid into 4 zones per team: 1 attack zone (AZ), 2 support zones (SZ), and 1 escape zone (EZ). You start battle with a max of 3 dinosaurs on the AZ and SZ. Dinosaurs in the AZ can attack enemy dinosaurs in both the AZ and SZ. Dinosaurs in the SZ can only attack the enemy dinosaur in the AZ, and they have an Attack debuff in that zone (unless it is a long-ranged dinosaur, then the above is ignored). SZ also gives a Def buff and unlocks a SZ dinosaur’s support abilities; these abilities gives buffs and debuffs to the dinosaurs on the AZ on either team, so having good support dinosaurs can help your AZ dinosaurs destroy the battlefield. Lastly, you can move your AZ dinosaur to the EZ, where they are out of range of all attacks and can recover from status effects; however, in doing so, an SZ dinosaur has to move to the AZ, and the EZ dinosaur is stuck there for 3 turns, before being booted out to the SZ. Moving your dinosaurs can help you when the AZ has a bad type matchup or low on health, but it can cause problems to your team setup as it takes around 6 turns to reorient your teams back into position. In Champions (2), the mechanics have changed. Each team now has 6 spots on the grid, shaped as two rings. 3 AZ spots on the front, 3 SZ spots on the back, and no EZ. The grid itself orients everything into 8 columns (4 per team), and the damage advantage is now determine by how far away from each column you are. Close-range dinosaurs deal the most damage at 1 column away, mid-range deal most at 4 columns away, and long-range deal most at 7 columns away. You have 3 dinosaurs, but they’re separated by one spot on the wheel, and you can turn the wheel to orient your dinosaurs to specific spots: one AZ and two SZ (both SZ add their buffs/debuffs together), or two AZ and one SZ (the buffs/debuffs are split in half for both AZs). Managing your positioning and distance becomes critical for this game. Now, Frontiers (3) is where they fucked everything up. The TLDR is that you no longer have control of all 3 dinosaurs, just your main one, and the other two are determined by party members. The grid is now 2x3 squares, your team on the left, enemies on the right, the fastest dinosaurs on the top and the slowest at the bottom. Speed also determines turn order. The dinosaurs can only attack dinosaurs ahead of them or on diagonal spots. You’d think that means the middle is the best spot, but most encounters are against 1-2 enemies only so the top dinosaur has the best range AND attacks fastest. If you have a dinosaur that’s stronger but slower than your teammates, then you will always go last on the battle order, and your range is limited to basically just the middle dinosaur, if there even is one. And because your “team” share the same pool of points (required for moves), the AI will eat up all the points doing their moves before you ever get a chance to attack, and might be forced to skip your turn. There’s no way to move your position, you can just be stuck in an automated battle where you cant do anything until the battle is either over or a teammate loses all its health and frees up a spot to move upwards. Frontiers is very bad, and not just for this.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is one of the more engaging RPG battle arenas. Proximity Bonus, Back Attacks, Launchers, Team Attacks, Environmental Hazards, Street Weapons all make the RPG combat feel more tactical and "in the moment".

When it comes to terrain mechanics, we gotta talk about one of the earliest in Live A Live. It was basically Square's first time doing something different with their RPGs and while simple it laid the foundation for all that came after, especially FF Tactics

Been working in Pokemon Essentials and this channel is perfect to help me make my perfect Pokemon game!

Thinking about FFT Terrain Not for the movement effects or geomancer attacks but bc of Arithmeticians interaction with height

Pokémon Reborn, Rejuvination, and Desolation are worth mentioning for their field effects having around 40 or so environments or so based on where you're battling. So like if youre fighting in a cave sound based moves will get a huge power boost from echoing and if you use earthquake a couple times there might be a cave in damaging both sides. Or like you can fight underwater and like fire type moves wont work at all and non water types take damage every turn, but then you can use dive to go back to the waters surface field but then like you can use sludge wave a couple times and turn it to mukwater where now poison moves are stronger and grounded pokemon are taking damage and then use blizzard to freeze over the water and now ice type noves are stronger and like all priority moves raise your speed as your gaining momentum from skating on the ice. Like, this is such a good system and adds so much depth and variety to pokemon. theres even some overworld puzzles that require you to change the terrain in battle to progress. Like, it's really really neat and interesting

With JRPGs, I usually base my team around "who is most in need of the exp?" Are some characters in my party way lower level than the others? Is there an optional fight somewhere I can only use certain characters with and not have a full party for story reasons and thus need to make sure those specific characters can hold their own? Is there a character whose usefulness simply doesn't come through until a much later level than everyone else and thus need to grind? Is there a big fight coming up and I need to make sure everyone's special meter is fully charged? I only break that if the boss fight is so tough that I really do need the strategic edge of specific characters. Environments tend to not factor in very much. Though I do remember a specific fight in Legend of Dragoon where there's a giant Snake in a cave. You just barely have enough characters to have a full party at this point in the game, 2 melee fighters and an ranged fighter. The melee do a lot of damage but their magic attack is not great- and the attack items' power is based on magic attack of the turn character. The ranged fighter barely does any damage with her bow but has the highest magic attack in the game. The fight with the giant snake starts off simple enough, like any other boss fight, but then like halfway through it goes though a tunnel and is way up in the air where the melee fighters can't reach it. The ranged fighter can still chip away it it with their abysmal damage each turn, but the melee fighters are stuck either just guarding, healing, or using consumable attack items well below their full power. Sure, the ranged fighter can just use the attack items to their full power, but then you sacrifice the only chance to deal damage for free and instead blow through your consumable a lot faster. And in another fight, there's a boss who sets up a respawning barrier that you have to break before you can damage him- but the game never tells you that, you just try to attack him, realize no damage was dealt, and then realize the barely visible barrier that wasn't there two turns ago is a selectable target.

it was about 90% of the way there, so i am almost surprised it wasnt formatted as a sliding scale: from earthbound to disgaea and beyond. From "minimal" effort into where the fights take place (a featureless void), all the way up to the exact genre of games where the level design is synonyms with the gameplay and every tile of terrain has a different effect on battle, from the terrain coverage of fire emblem, to the throwing limitations and geo effects of disgaea. It is there in the footage and subtext, but grid based terrain is limited to megaman battle network which handles the grid system so uniquely that it doesnt quite compare to anything else, and unicorn overlord, which trashes the grid in its entirety.

A correction on the BG3 rulebook statement: Every rule in 5E, which is drastically simplified compared to former editions. Comparing it to Solasta, which pulls from 3E, you can see 5E was made for casual audiences.

For me it s into the breach. The ennemi and our actions can damage things we dont want. And it s prêts dynamic. If we shoot in the sand, it s making sandstorm.. etc

Well, I like Panzer Dragoon Saga's battle screen a lot. To the point that it's the game that's made me seriously consider RPGs as a genre- I played it a few weeks ago, and it's the first, and only, RPG I've really gotten into, and it's because of said battle screen. It's a realtime battle system, with four quadrants arranged in a circle that you can move between. Enemies are in the center, and can also move around you, effectively moving you into another quadrant. Enemies also have firing arcs, and some sides of some enemies have a weak point. This combines together to make a very engaging battle system, which is halfway between a classic turn-based non-spacial RPG and a more modern action RPG. It's brilliant, and every time it starts to get stale, they add a new wrinkle to it, like enemies where it makes sense to wait for them to move, arenas where one quadrant is blocked off, or enemies with weak points that only briefly open up inside of an enemy's best firing arc, forcing the player to expose themselves to do the most damage.

HOLY SHIT SOMEONE ACTUALLY KNOWS ABOUT CHILD OF LIGHT

Great video, lots of great examples

World in Conflict, a realy good strategy game developed by Massive Entertainment, uses terrain to affect your units line of sight. like most strategy games enemy units won't show on your minimap until your units have line-of-sight on them. In Wic units vision can be blocked by terrain features, like buildings, hills, forests etc, creating excellent opportunity for abushes. In fact the infantry role in WiC multiplayer is almost entirally build around taking advantage of how unit vision works.

With regards to pokemon's terrain effects, there's a great fangame, "Pokemon Reborn", that adds a ton of depth to them, and tons of new ones on top of that! The effects are very in depth and powerful, with nearly every major might being designed to take advantage of one of them. You can use them to your advantage as well, or even change the field effect entirely! Using dive on water's surface will bring the battle underwater. Using heat wave or the likes on grassy terrain will turn it into burning field, which you can put out with rain, sandstorm, or a variety of wind moves, completely removing any field from play. And you can temporarily overwrite the field by having a porygon use conversion and conversion 2 back to back, creating glitch field, which is a wacky fusion of modern and gen 1 mechanics. This only really scratches the surface, so if you're looking for ideas on interesting terrain effects, I highly recommend checking it out!

Tactics Ogre had a cool set up using elevation and positioning

Also, another thing to add about Steamworld haste, is that the game allows headshots and even damaging the legs to reduce enemy mobility. So it's trickshot system is even more emphasized by rewarding shots from below or above.

This is like the 3rd video where I see Unicorn Overlord highlighted here in the channel. Is this my signal to purchase it...?

Honestly the way Paper Mario TTYD's stage works makes the game so much more interesting and it's a shame it never showed up again (not counting paying toads for help in Origami King)

I swear, you upload exactly what i was needing to do for my games at the perfect times. Do you have cameras on me or something?

It might be simple compared to the other examples in this video, but I feel that the Worms games deserve an honorable mention at least, due to how destructible the stages are

I know it's relatively subdued in its terrain use but I can't help thinking of Live A Live when this topic is brought up, if only because the Prehistory Superboss ingrained it in my memory that the battlefield would just be filled with fire tiles after the prick used Erruption. I do like how the game handles those tiles though, given how the battle system works, positioning is incredibly important for combat

Its too bad there was no mention the best use of terrain in any RPG. The final battle of the first chapter in Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling together and how battle maps can be used to tell a story. The player starts in a map where their units have the high ground around the time the game is unlocking the first units who can really abuse this. The maps makes you think you are absolutely balling, making short work of the enemy. You complete the fight! Horray, that was easy! ... and the story does a 180 and so does the battle map. Now the player is stuck at the bottom, with no way to abuse range, while the enemy is making you cling to walls for safety and you have to struggle to mount any sort response. That sense of being the chosen hero? Gone, both for the MC and the player. It was a master class in how to frame a story beat with terrain.

it may be a litle of topick when it comes to game genre but monster hunter uses the terain quiete well, outside of the obvous highground & hiding gehind walls. for example, the pillars in the rise dessert. if a monster breaks them, a temporary pitfalltrap is created, giving you a bit of time to just attack also slopes & hammer. the one weapon with a attack you could ony doo while sliding. the weather also affected the unter to some extend in the previous games, lake extreme heat and cold. one drains your health & the other makes you use more stamina. there are sometimes even things above you like a rock tangeld in vines or there is a bit of rock blocking som water

saw MegaMan.exe and instantly clicked 👍