DBZ RPG thoughts and ideas.

[Xyex]

We've had several DBZ RPGs come out over the years on the GB, NES, SNES, and more recently the 3 LoG games. Each game's had it's good points and it's bad points. The NES games (of what I played of them) were boring though they had great animation/graphics for NES. The GB one was rather dull too but interesting in the way it worked. LoG1 just sucked while 2 was better and I've not played Buu's Fury.

IMO Legend of the Super Saiya-jin for the SNES was the best of the games yet made. Granted, it was turn based and so not a perfect representation of the series, but it was far more realistic (Well, Z-istic) than the LoG games. (No fighting animals, bleh!) And I would be interested in an English language release of the game for the GBA/DS.

However, I would love to see a new RPG for the PS2. I've been wondering how an RPG like this would work and that's why I made this post. This has been bouncing around in my head for a bit now and decided to pound it all out on paper (screen, whatever).

Now, no existing RPG battle system/engine that I know of would work for DBZ. Turn based doesn't capture the speed or action of DBZ and an action RPG doesn't capture the power as well. A system along the lines of ZoE would work for a fighting game but not really for an RPG. Part of DBZ is the Big Ass Energy Blasts™ and in a fast paced real time game you really can't get those without the cutscenes that people complain about in the Budokai games.

What's needed, IMO, is something new. At least, new as far as I know. The idea is as follows. Typical RPG style with overworld maps, towns, etc. Random battles too I suppose, easiest way to do it. Anyway, you enter the battle and pick your first move ala turn based RPG. You and the other guys start attacking each other in a cutscene style battle.

During the battle the the Square, Circle, X, Triangle, R1, R2, R3, L1, L2, and L3 buttons are shown at the bottom displaying different attacks/techniques/defenses/whatever to choose from. What's displayed for each button depends upon what's happening on screen. So basicly it's a turn based RPG but with out any 'pauses' in gameplay. Even when you're not pushing something to attack with the battle is still playing out.

I think that makes sense. If not let me know and I'll try and explain it better. If so, then what do you think? Sound good or not?

[Herms]

That sounds pretty good so far. However, if you still want to preserve that Z feeling, who would you have level-up battles against?

An interesting thing that I would like to see would be the ability to adjust your chi. Basically, when you fight against someone, you can choose what percentage of your power to use. The lower the percentage, the slower and weaker you are, but the experience gained from the battle will increase. It would work sort of like weighted clothes did in LoG3.

So for instance, let’s say you’re sparring with those most hated woodland creatures. If you use 100% of your power, you’ll squash it with no effort at all, but only get 1 experience point. If you lower you power to only 1%, you’ll have a much tougher fight, but when you win you’ll get 100 experience points. Make sense?

Now, since there ain’t anyone but an elite few who can put up any sort of fight against our Z-fighters, you’ll spend pretty much of all your time at a very small percentage of your power. If you play at 100% all the time, you’ll beat up all the weak henchmen type people real easily, but you’ll never level up enough to take on the bosses.

The way I see it, this way we don’t have to suffer through seeing Goku get in a fight to the death with a rattlesnake, or having some random leveling-up enemy have stats better than Freeza.

[Mugenmidget]

Bravo, great idea on the experience system!

You can control your Ki levels in TDIR, but there's no EXP system. In an RPG game, that would rock so hard!

[IncredibleGuy]

So basicly it's a turn based RPG but with out any 'pauses' in gameplay.

So, then basically it's an action RPG.

[Xyex]

Well ya, in a way it is an action RPG but it still runs of a turn based system and such. And yeah, the lowing of Ki levels to increase EXP would be a good idea, especially later on in the game when the characters are all uber powerful.

Though some slight alterations ala LotSSJ and LoG2 style would give you more of the stronger type of bad guys to fight. For example, if I was making the first of the RPG games for this series (face it, Z is to long for one game (RPG at least) to cover it all) this is how I'd handle the 'level up guys':

Raditz arrives on Earth not in a space pod but a saucer ship full of low level soldiers that would begin attacking Earth. (Raditz and the other Saiyans haven't a clue about 'Kakarot' being on Earth.) Some of them would manage to capture Gohan, because of the tail, and take him back to Raditz. These soldiers would range in power from 100 - 800 making them good level up fodder and Raditz would, of course, be the boss.

For Nappa and Vegeta: Nappa would arrive ahead of Vegeta and spawn off an army of Saibamen with PLs from 800 - 2,000 (not just 6 but a few thousand, maybe of different varrites to keep it interesting) and the Saibamen would be the level up fodder with Nappa was a sub boss and Vegeta would arrive just as Nappa goes down and be the main boss.

On Namek: This is already set-up pretty well. Lots and lots of soldiers with PLs ranging from 1,500 - 20,000 plus Dodira and Zarbon as sub bosses. Then Freeza would call in the Ginyu force and his elite soldiers. The elites would have PLs from 25,000 to 50,000 as level up fodder (Guldo as a sub boss or something, the weakling). Recoome would be the boss until Goku gets back and then Ginyu would be the boss.

After that you'd deal with the 'left over' soldiers to level up some more before dealing with Freeza as the main boss of the game.

The second game could be done in a similar fashion. Instead of having 19 and 20 show up alone and right off the bat have an army of drone type robots appear and start attacking places. Instant level up fodder with 19 and 20 as the bosses. Beating them would send 20 running, he'd release 17 and 18 (16 would come to of course) as well as stronger model drones to deal with you. Things would continue as such until Cell's appearance at which time training in the RoSaT would be your level up method and Cell, of course, the boss(es).

For the third game, the Budokai would level you up some, and Babidi could have brought a few thousand more Majins with him to help you level up and such. It's all doable with only small changes to the story-line (changes that effect little to none of the plot) and don't require you to fight Racoons and normal people.

[Herms]

That’s real good, Xyex. I think random battles would work pretty well that way. Still, I think there should be a good portion of leveling up that comes from some sort of training, instead of random battles. You know, like the gravity room or something. You could get experience for doing some sort of difficult action. I’ll think some more about that later, however.

Now, those measures of the enemy powers you gave, they’re on the same scale as the DBZ power levels, I assume. It’d be a lot of fun to include those, but how exactly would they figure? I mean, a power level is just one number. Every rpg I’ve ever played has several different stats. Otherwise, the characters are a little too shallow.

I guess that the power level could be the sum of all of the stats, which would give you a fairly good approximation of a particular character’s worth. For instance, let’s say you have Ginyu. Let’s say that in our game, we want his punches and kicks to be much tougher than his energy attacks. So we make his physical attack power, say, 40,000 and his energy attack power 20,000. His defense: 35,000, and his speed 25,000. Add it together and you get, of course, 120,000.

That’s just an example, of course. We don’t have to have those kinds of stat categories and certainly not those values for Ginyu. The stats assigned would try to match the sort of fighter the character is in the series. Nappa, for instance, would have a lot more strength and endurance than speed or energy.

This is a lot of fun, thinking up these ideas, even if it probably won’t go anywhere.

[Xyex]

Well, I'm not really sure how LotSSJ managed it's system but I know it was all series style PLs. (With 'Ki points' for your energy attacks to use up). Really, that's all you need. The PL determines your attack, defense, and speed in the series anyway. But ya, for terms of an RPG breaking it down a bit would be useful...

Hmmm. Perhaps the status screen would give you the basic rundown of your stats. For example: HP - 250, Attak - 200, Def - 200, Speed - 150, Ki - 100 (Strength of Ki attacks and the ammount of 'Ki Points' you have). That's a total of 900 points. Now to determine the PL you'd multiply it by 100 and you'd have 90,000 (Goku's PL when first arriving on Namek). Of course, you could always just multiply the stat points by 100 on their own but whatever, these are to be more traditional RPG stats. Now this is similar to yours Herms, but not exactly because of an idea that I'll get to in a moment.

Of course, the Kaio Ken would work the same as the series, and SSJ would be a 50 fold increase, SSJ2 would double that, and so would SSJ3 (just to make it managable). With something like the USSJ forms you'd boost the Ki and Attk and lower the Speed while leaving the Def alone.

Now for that idea I mentioned. In the series what happens as you get beaten up or expend Ki? You lose power. Hence why HP factors into your PL and even your Ki is strength and points (though using Ki doesn't weaken it...) An example using the Goku stats from above.

Your HP is down from 250 to only 100 and you've used up all of your Ki. That means your PL is currently 65,000. This wouldn't exactly effect the battle since your Attk is still 200 but it would make it at least look more like the show.

[IncredibleGuy]

If DBZ were ever to be made into an RPG I'd prefer the characters to level up the same way they do in the story: through training. Changing the story just so players can advance said character's skills in the same manner used for every other RPG on the planet only shows a low amount of creativity in the creator... in my opinion.

[oponok]

I agree with IncredibleGuy. In fact, I only think Dragonball should be a fighting game or an action RPG. I enjoy the freedom of wielding power without cycling through menus and fighting dogs and farm animals.