Make more Solo CRPGs
One genre of game that I think is really missing in the market is the Solo, turn based CRPG. Now I don’t necessarily mean no party, I mean you get to level, equip and control just one person. If you have a party, they do their own thing. You need to adapt, just like you would if you were playing a tabletop RPG with friends.
Systems like the Lone Wolf mode in Divinity Original Sin 2 are a great example of a partyless version of this. Other games where party members can switch to ‘make your own decisions please’ also work when the AI is well built.
I am well aware that there are plenty of good RPGs both old and new. I have a particular soft spot for turned based combat in these games because it tends to lend itself more towards strategy than quick reflexes.
Where a lot of party based games come unstuck for me is having to micromanage so many people. Their stats and gear all need to be carefully considered. I need to make all of their choices both in and out of combat. It starts to feel more like a sports team management game than something immersive.
I felt this a lot in Pathfinder WoTR and to a lesser extent in Baulders Gate 3. It’s fun to adventure with a crew, but I don’t want to have to guide them every step of the way. I want the feeling that I am one person, stuck in this world working things out as best I can.
If I have companions I don’t want to suddenly embody them. Let them make their own choices, let me mess up my interactions with them and have them become annoyed. Let me react to their choices in combat and learn to predict their behaviour based on time spent together. Let them do the same for me.
The turn based aspect is fairly key here. There are plenty of games, most recently on my list Avowed, where you roam the world with companions that end up acting mostly as distractions for enemy agro.
The slower, more deliberate nature of turn based CRPGs means they can make meaningful decisions that players can build on, taking the time to pause and work out how best to respond. That isn’t to say real-time (or it’s odd real-time-with-pause cousin) can’t work. There’s just a lot more you need to get right to have your companions do more than spam their basic attacks.
While it’s a fairly old game at this point, I think Final Fantasy XII’s gambit system was an excellent example of this working well. Most of the time you were focused in on one player. The other’s had a predictable set of actions you’d set up in advance. Your healer isn’t going to suddenly charge into the front line and your DPS party member will spam spells rather than weapon attacks.
With all the recent advances in AI (the game kind, not the large language kind) I am confident modern games could do this well. Even looking at the enemy AI in recent games like BG3 shows what’s possible.
I don’t think all CRPGs should be solo. I enjoy party management sometimes. It’s fun to build a team with complimentary skills and setups and string together a series of well planned moves. I just want to see more examples where I can waltz around as one person and go deep into that persona.
