Posted July 19, 2019
I am wondering what RPGs, preferably ones I haven't heard of, that take unorthodox approaches to charact er growth.
There are a few things I am explicitly not looking for:
* I do not want levels and experience points; that growth system has been overused.
* I am not looking for "improve stat/skill by using" systems either; among RPGs that forgo XP leveling, you usually see some variation of this system.
* I am not looking for games where you level up via XP, but have another secondary growth system (say, for learning abilities; most Final Fantasy games from 5 onward fall into this system).
* I am not looking for action games that are labeled as RPGs; if we were to allow those, then we'd have to allow games like Zelda and Metroid, which I am clearly not looking for.
* An RPG with no character growth *is* acceptable for this purpose, but only because such games are practically unheard of, and I would like to hear about such games.
The best example I can think of for what I am looking for would be the original SaGa. SaGa 2 and SaGa Frontier are also like this for some of their races (though SaGa Frontier suffers from being too human centric; it's impossible to get through the game, for *any* main character, without having a human forced into your party early on, and humans use a "improve stats by use" growth system).
So, any suggestions?
There are a few things I am explicitly not looking for:
* I do not want levels and experience points; that growth system has been overused.
* I am not looking for "improve stat/skill by using" systems either; among RPGs that forgo XP leveling, you usually see some variation of this system.
* I am not looking for games where you level up via XP, but have another secondary growth system (say, for learning abilities; most Final Fantasy games from 5 onward fall into this system).
* I am not looking for action games that are labeled as RPGs; if we were to allow those, then we'd have to allow games like Zelda and Metroid, which I am clearly not looking for.
* An RPG with no character growth *is* acceptable for this purpose, but only because such games are practically unheard of, and I would like to hear about such games.
The best example I can think of for what I am looking for would be the original SaGa. SaGa 2 and SaGa Frontier are also like this for some of their races (though SaGa Frontier suffers from being too human centric; it's impossible to get through the game, for *any* main character, without having a human forced into your party early on, and humans use a "improve stats by use" growth system).
So, any suggestions?