I was playing Tyrian last night when I had the most remarkable idea. What if someone combined elements of a 360* scrolling shooter (think Zone 66 or Fire Fight), but replaced the shooter elements with those of a CRPG? Think of it, you travel from sector to sector, planet to planet, and have random encounters as you fly around, like you would have random encounters just walking around in an ordinary CRPG? Combat is turn-based, and your party would consist of a crew on a single battlecruiser, or a squadron of fighters and bombers. Boss battles would be against bigger cruisers and giant tanks, or against heavily defended fortresses. I'm aware of Whale's Voyage, which is in line with what I'm thinking of, but it's not quite there.

So would you play it?

You have to put a link after the "=" in the url brackets, otherwise it goes nowhere. And I've never played Eve Online. I was under the impression that it was like a Freelancer MMO, but based more around fleet building than a single pilot out on his or her own. No, what I'm talking about is replacing the elements of a typical classic console RPG (hence CRPG, also known as a J-RPG) with the elements I mentioned previously. It's all 16-bit sprites, 2D scrolling planes, etc. Imagine fighting the Ruby Weapon in FF7, but instead of Cloud and Co on an airship, you have a Tyrian-style battlecruiser OR a squadron of fighters, and instead of the Ruby Weapon you have Vykromod (post-Episode 1). The combat is turn-based like a JRPG, with limit breaks embodied by "overcharging" a laser or something, and instead of summons and mana, you have heavy ordnance with limited ammo or a lengthy recharge time.

Aaah okay that makes sense, sounds like an interesting game so would you get upgrades to the ship or would your character be upgraded like resistance to blacking out because of g-force, or would it be a combination of both?

also thanks about how to use the link tool.


Link so something like this only more open? this game is mission based but i think you mean more of an open world type of game right?

The idea didn't make my jaw drop, but if You manage to make a GOG-Community-Dev-Team You'll have my axe.:)

Nah, like I said, it'd be played just like a JRPG, which means as you unveil more of the (linear) plot (which undoubtedly involves preventing some Cosmic Outer God from entering our dimension), you get to move on to and between more areas. I imagine upgrading and leveling up would be a combination of upgrading ship parts and spending on schooling in whatever your selected crew member's specialty is, kind of like the original Front Mission.

Try Spaceforce: Captains it's kind of what you are talking about. You explore normally but when you encounter an enemy your switch to a sort of JRPG/FInal Fantasy style turn based combat.

Yeah, but that's still heavy on resource collection and tech tree advancement. I don't know how I can simplify the idea any further than "Final Fantasy swaps sprites with Tyrian". No maneuvering of ships like pieces on a chess board, just choosing whether to attack, defend, use an item, or wait.

Sounds somewhat similar to Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. But I know what you're getting at though, and that could be awesome. There definitely aren't enough sci-fi RPGs.

Exactly, just replace the "Puzzle Fight" and that's it.

Assuming the story is something decent and the entire cast doesn't consist of whiny 14 year old magical twits and that it avoids all those horrid sci-fi clichés, then I'd play the shit out of that game.

There are way too few non high fantasy RPGs.

... that almost sounds like what Sigma Star Saga on the GBA wanted to be. It was a shooter where you basically leveled up as you shot down enemies, almost RPG-like...

@Hesusio
Unless one of those 14-y/o's is a clone with accelerated growth, then there probably won't be any. The only "cliches" I'm after are the "hard-bitten mercenary/salvage/ancient-alien-artifact-hunting crew" cliches. Kinda like the crew from Alien Resurrection. They get "conscripted" (read: press-ganged) into the linear-plot's "main mission" by the game-world's Imperial-type gov't. "We have whole hard drives worth of charges against you. We'll toss you all in the cacky if you don't cooperate and go on this ultimately suicidal mission." That stuff.

@Foxhack
Forget about the shooter elements. Play a game called Starflight. Most of the game consists of exploring systems and landing on planets and exploring those planets in a rover. Combat in space is real-time, arcade-style shooting of lasers and torpedoes to wear down regenerative shields and ultimately the hull.

Now think about FF's ATB system replacing the arcade shooter combat, where fights are initiated either by random encounter or when the player's sprite and an enemy sprite collide. The fights never take place on foot, only in space or on the ground in the rover. THE REST OF THE GAME WORLD FREEZES IN PLACE WHILE A FIGHT IS IN MOTION, WHICH MOVES FORWARD STEP-BY-STEP. No arcade action, no resource management or tower defense, just an RPGMaker-type JRPG with sci-fi sprites.




If the idea is really this hard to express, then I'm not going to bother trying to explain it anymore.

Does not Space Rangers fit the bill? While it is entirely turn based, when not in fight it can move rather like real time, while there are standing orders.

No, because Space Rangers is more about trading, and is too open-ended to compare to what I'm talking about.

I'm going to try explaining one last time, only now with crude mockups. Observe the "Before" and "After" images attached to this post.