hi. i looked up a few games like song summoner, uniwar, highborn, etc and realized there is a lack of serious tactics games like disgaea, ff tactics, dynasty tactics, mech commander, X-Com, etc. why is this? i would have thought that the iphone would be an incredible platform for such a game. is it just a dying genre? any insight would be appreciated!
War of Eustrath is coming by the end of Summer, and FF:Tactics is coming in September. I don't think it's a dying genre, just one that hasn't been realised on the iDevice, that's all.
I've always attributed it to the amount of time it takes to develop a game like that. While I suppose it might seem kind of trivial to just build a grid, design some units, and let them battle... Balancing strategy games is an insane amount of work. It's the same reason why we've really yet to see a competent card battle game on the App Store. Regardless of how hard they try, a lone indie developer working out of their bedroom just can't compete with the nearly 20 years of R&D behind a game like Magic: The Gathering. The people behind M:TG have an army of designers, and even more play testers who do nothing but play each new set of cards for months on end, both by itself and with existing sets of other cards. It's almost impossibly difficult for a small team to do the same thing.
There's also battle for wesnoth which has tons of content and is extremely fun. Can't believe no one has mentioned it. There's also rebirth of fortune, mecho wars. And shadow era looks to be a decent TCG and I believe there's 4 other TCG/ tbs games coming out soon. It'll come
thanks for these! wesnoth looks epic. also thanks to the above posters for letting me know ff tactics is coming out. that really made my day!!!!!!!!!!!
Commodore 64 has Laser Squad as free DLC. It's old and crusty, but made by the same guy that made X-Com so you know what to expect.
The thing is that there is a bunch of awesome TBS (turn based strategy) games, but almost no SRPGs to speak of. You would think that before Square puts out FFT that someone would try to fill that niche in the app store without having to compete with such a big name in the genre.
Well War of Eustrath is coming out before that. But yeah, I'm surprised there aren't more true SRPGs.
Rogue planet and reign of swords worth a look. Also not strictly based take a look at trenches and warlords.
is that what the genre is called? SRPG as in strategy RPG? i always just called them turn based tactic games.
I think Hodapp's point holds for SRPGs as well -- a combat system that is well balanced and fun (as well as allowing for flexibility in character development) is very difficult to achieve. Then there are also the not-trivial tasks of crafting a compelling, well paced story, creating a wide range of visual assets, composing suitable music, etc. Most indie developers don't have the in-house talent to pull all that off, and they certainly don't have the budget to hire the best in the business (unlike Square Enix or Atlus). And even if the indie gets everything right, they would have a tough time charging more than $5.99 for an unknown IP -- too little to make the risk worth it. I love the War of Eustrath, but it's clear that they had to take some shortcuts in the visuals (the maps are pretty plain), music (fairly limited), and story (decent enough, but not as tight as it could be) departments. Still, the fact that the game happened at all is something of a minor miracle. No question that SRPGs are a good fit for a touchscreen interface; unfortunately, the economics of game publishing makes it difficult for anyone but the most well-heeled publishers to pull one off successfully. @pixelchild: so did I, till I was corrected. Apparently, the proper name for the genre of games like FFT is SRPG.
For turn based games I would love to see Metal Gear AC!D but I am just wishing something that will never come true. I just want to see Metal Gear AC!D 1 and 2 ported. Them maybe a MGA3.
Rogue Planet would be my favorite iPhone game if it weren't for some of the insane battles (like Mexico City, where you have one bridge, and factories on both sides - just plain retarded). The controls, the pacing, everything about the game is so smooth...
