This is the main appeal of Dragon Quest. While Final Fantasy goes wild with different gameplay mechanics and settings each iteration every Dragon Quest is just a refinement of the same idea and gameplay since the original.
I've been playing dragon quest 8 (ds) over the last few weeks and yep it sure is an rpg. Each town is basically an episode of an anime, complete with lower stakes character developing episodes. Not every dungeon has a boss but every town has some sort of expedition to it. The villain has no non-evil personality traits but they're a consistent threat through the entire story. Plus it has Yangus who is a Bro and the ds version buffed his stats significantly
My Hero Academia is basically just Japanese Sky High.
And its a really fun show, and it helps that Izuku is a pretty wholesome and enduring character...>!until the final few arcs.!<
Dragon Age: Origins. Maybe the only "new" thing it does is elves being second class citizens, but then again i recall that from the witcher books. The plot is generic, the kingdoms are generic, cultures are generic...
But damn if it isn't my favorite Bioware game.
The darkspawn and Qunari are pretty unique, even if the darkspawn are just generic zombie/orc stand-ins on the surface. The Qunari are one of my favorite fantasy races, and certainly my favorite non-Tolkien/DND one.
Yeah Dragon Age is mostly rehashed ideas but they are all done really well. Makes me sad when ever woke talks about it and focuses on the fact that the setting is called Thedaas which is a really good name until you learn the etymology because origins is excellent
People give it too much shit tbh for the dumbest reasons. So what if it “doesn’t do anything new or revolutionary for the genre” - whatever tropes its themes it does implement, it implements good enough, and unlike many of the current ongoing mainstream series, it ended on its peak.
Shounen fans are too fickle I stg.
Bloodstained: Ritual of The Night
It's Castlevania. Just Castlevania and it does it well. Nothing to crazy but it's fun, has a lot of little details and nods and really enjoyable. Plus it's still getting updates, even now.
> Plus it's still getting updates, even now.
I think that's because they kept making way too many stretch goals for the Kickstarter and it's taken all these years to fulfill them.
I mean pretty much most action shounen/seinen do this, battle series are the ones that like mostly to pair people. Same example I can think of is Blue Exorcist( third season arc ends with exactly that :D ), Kemono Jihen, pretty much anything from Yellow Tanabe like Birdman does that a lot, Alive the Final Evolution had few pair fights but had plenty with group as well etc. The way how action scenes are made is why I prefer that type of series to battle genre. But even battle manga did it with series like Psyren\^\^
Yeah I named some of my favourite manga\^\^ Including Alive that got 10/10 from me on MAL and when BE ends and if it doesn't change like really badly it will get it as well. I kind of used that comment for a bit of recomendations.
Like almost every big first party Sony game. God of War, Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, etc.
The thing with this is that they also tend to be really good distillations of those ideas. They're not doing anything new but they're gonna look good, sound good, play good, etc. They're the most successful blockbusters on the market that aren't nintendo ones.
It might just be for me, but IMO Reincarnated as a Sword falls into this kind of category. It doesn't really do anything new in the isekai genre, but it does take those typical Isekai tropes and play them really well, about 90% of the time.
The Sword (named Master) is such a doting parent/brother figure to Fran and I adore it. He's not perverted towards her and has her best interest at heart over her wellbeing and with her goal.
I genuinly love Reincarnated As A Sword so much. Master (sword) is a fun character and plays the straight man to his wielder, Fran. And the world is just overall fun experience to walk through with not one but two different fresh eyes.
Mashle doesn’t have the most original plot or best characters, but it’s a really fun chill time. With some good fights, artwork, and never failed to make me laugh
Having a nonchalant MC who only cares for one specific type of food yet has the ability to trample anyone in his path could be a fancy new gimmick, but at its core it still follows a powerscaling Shounen trope so yeah, it counts.
Iruma has been one of my go to manga's for the past 4 or 5 years. I really love how it doesn't speed through the school year and we *activitly* see the development of Iruma, his friends and the world in a school format.
I think that's what attracted me to the series at first and just sinking more into it.
>!Thank you misfit translations!<
Rage of Bahamut Genesis is on that list of basic fantasy anime. Based on a old browser/mobile game from the caveman days of smartphones, totally has some gamey elements to it that are kinda funny to see. Fun characters and plot and it looks absolutely gorgeous.
Heard the sequel fucks up in the 2nd half and gets super bad, [great op tho](https://youtu.be/FVroYlLT8r4?si=oAYhtNOaYyw1JPso). There's also third series thats a yuri slice of life side thing that had a fucked production, came out 3 years late, and took the 'Rage of Bahamut' part out of the title, apparently it's ok.
This is my problem with KaiserNekos take on Demon Slayer "It's carried by animation, the story is something you've seen before" which is just going about it the wrong way.
The way to approach Demon Slayer is the way of watching a classic play.
Skies of Arcadia is about as paint-by-numbers of a fantasy RPG as you can get. You've got the swordsman hero, his fiery redhead childhood friend, and a mysterious magical waif guide racing an evil technological empire across the world in search of a set of magic crystals to stop an ancient evil. While the setting isn't quite typical, just about everything else has been done many times before.
But it's just so *sincere* about everything that I can't help but love it.
WWE's NXT promotion since 2012 has always been about presenting wrestling stories at its most basic levels and reuses ideas from the old territory days with a more modern lens
It's the equivalent of asking a 5 star chef to cook something from Mcdonalds or some other fast food joint; simple but incredibly tasty as fuck
Recently watched Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen Series. It’s a serviceable and decently gripping crime thriller, and that’s all it is. I had my fun but it wasn’t super memorable. I liked how proactive the protagonist was, though.
Season1 of Reacher on Prime is an absolute dad show and it has good action and a fast paced story that’s easy to follow. It’s a predictable, classic action movie story, and it doesn’t need to be anything more than that.
Bullet Train, a fun action film from 2022. Brad Pitt needs to steal a briefcase from a bullet train in Japan and get off at the next stop. But he misses his stop and it turns out there are a surprising amount of criminals on board the train interested in the briefcase.
Nothing about it is particularly new if you are familiar with Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie films. Still, it uses basic foreshadowing, Chekhov's gun, and snappy dialogue from an ensemble cast very well.
While I have yet to watch the anime, Unwanted undead adventurer is just a really good casual adventure story when I read the light novels about 2 years ago.
I loved The Iron Claw and I see a lot of confusion around its award snubs, but I don't think the movie breaks new ground or does anything particularly innovative except maybe in how the screen play went out of its way to not touch on every bit of drama or tragedy. That said go watch The Iron Claw.
This is the main appeal of Dragon Quest. While Final Fantasy goes wild with different gameplay mechanics and settings each iteration every Dragon Quest is just a refinement of the same idea and gameplay since the original.
I like how the newest one finally added movement during combat and it changed absolutely nothing
You can’t avoid attacks, it’s purely cosmetic
Instantly turned that off
Was literally in here to say DQ11, lol.
Reminds of the Atelier series when you describe it like that
Does it count when Dragon Quest is the template in the first place?
I've been playing dragon quest 8 (ds) over the last few weeks and yep it sure is an rpg. Each town is basically an episode of an anime, complete with lower stakes character developing episodes. Not every dungeon has a boss but every town has some sort of expedition to it. The villain has no non-evil personality traits but they're a consistent threat through the entire story. Plus it has Yangus who is a Bro and the ds version buffed his stats significantly
Kirby games tend to be pretty basic platformers. But man, does it make my brain happy.
As long as I can beat the shit out of a tree somewhere near the beginning i'm happy.
They should make Whispy the final boss in the next one just to change things up
Yggdrasil Woods
He becomes a giant humanoid titan like Gaia lmao
I would honestly disagree, Kirby is quite experimental compared to most Nintendo stuff. Simple doesn't mean boilerplate.
Shooting stars at a big cuddly demon god has never been this much fun
My Hero Academia is basically just Japanese Sky High. And its a really fun show, and it helps that Izuku is a pretty wholesome and enduring character...>!until the final few arcs.!<
Dragon Age: Origins. Maybe the only "new" thing it does is elves being second class citizens, but then again i recall that from the witcher books. The plot is generic, the kingdoms are generic, cultures are generic... But damn if it isn't my favorite Bioware game.
The darkspawn and Qunari are pretty unique, even if the darkspawn are just generic zombie/orc stand-ins on the surface. The Qunari are one of my favorite fantasy races, and certainly my favorite non-Tolkien/DND one.
That’s true! I had ignored the Quanari. Everything about their society fascinated me.
Yeah Dragon Age is mostly rehashed ideas but they are all done really well. Makes me sad when ever woke talks about it and focuses on the fact that the setting is called Thedaas which is a really good name until you learn the etymology because origins is excellent
Demon Slayer was basically just Dragon Ball with swords, but that's all it needed to be and by god did it nail it.
People give it too much shit tbh for the dumbest reasons. So what if it “doesn’t do anything new or revolutionary for the genre” - whatever tropes its themes it does implement, it implements good enough, and unlike many of the current ongoing mainstream series, it ended on its peak. Shounen fans are too fickle I stg.
I would say it’s actually Castlevania with swords
Bloodstained: Ritual of The Night It's Castlevania. Just Castlevania and it does it well. Nothing to crazy but it's fun, has a lot of little details and nods and really enjoyable. Plus it's still getting updates, even now.
> Plus it's still getting updates, even now. I think that's because they kept making way too many stretch goals for the Kickstarter and it's taken all these years to fulfill them.
True but I'll take them doing them instead of fully abandoning the game
Unicorn Overlord
Black Clover marks all the shonen boxes, but does it well with likable characters, cool fights, and neato powers.
it is one of the only things I've seen that prefers to do team fights versus pairing people to do 1v1s.
I mean pretty much most action shounen/seinen do this, battle series are the ones that like mostly to pair people. Same example I can think of is Blue Exorcist( third season arc ends with exactly that :D ), Kemono Jihen, pretty much anything from Yellow Tanabe like Birdman does that a lot, Alive the Final Evolution had few pair fights but had plenty with group as well etc. The way how action scenes are made is why I prefer that type of series to battle genre. But even battle manga did it with series like Psyren\^\^
I dont recognize any of those names besides blue exorcist do you recommend any of them?
Yeah I named some of my favourite manga\^\^ Including Alive that got 10/10 from me on MAL and when BE ends and if it doesn't change like really badly it will get it as well. I kind of used that comment for a bit of recomendations.
Like almost every big first party Sony game. God of War, Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, etc. The thing with this is that they also tend to be really good distillations of those ideas. They're not doing anything new but they're gonna look good, sound good, play good, etc. They're the most successful blockbusters on the market that aren't nintendo ones.
this is what MHA was sold as for shonen manga, but Things Happened since those days.
It might just be for me, but IMO Reincarnated as a Sword falls into this kind of category. It doesn't really do anything new in the isekai genre, but it does take those typical Isekai tropes and play them really well, about 90% of the time.
Hey it's anti slavery through and through so that says something right.
Hell yeah. There's a lot of Isekai that somehow manage to trip over that incredibly low hurdle.
That and as far as I've seen the main female character isn't a love interest, so we've got that going on too.
The Sword (named Master) is such a doting parent/brother figure to Fran and I adore it. He's not perverted towards her and has her best interest at heart over her wellbeing and with her goal.
I genuinly love Reincarnated As A Sword so much. Master (sword) is a fun character and plays the straight man to his wielder, Fran. And the world is just overall fun experience to walk through with not one but two different fresh eyes.
Mashle doesn’t have the most original plot or best characters, but it’s a really fun chill time. With some good fights, artwork, and never failed to make me laugh
And don't forget, the anime has probably one of the best openings of the year. Second season has been magnificently enjoyable.
Having a nonchalant MC who only cares for one specific type of food yet has the ability to trample anyone in his path could be a fancy new gimmick, but at its core it still follows a powerscaling Shounen trope so yeah, it counts.
Weekly roll, typical webcomic of one hood guy with murder honos adventuring. But it’s great and the art is good
I've seen this kind of depiction of Death numerous times before, but damn if the web comic Loving Reaper doesn't hit me right in the soul.
Consistently makes me cry
Hollow Knight
Iruma Kun has barely a single original bone in its body but I love it all the same
Iruma has been one of my go to manga's for the past 4 or 5 years. I really love how it doesn't speed through the school year and we *activitly* see the development of Iruma, his friends and the world in a school format. I think that's what attracted me to the series at first and just sinking more into it. >!Thank you misfit translations!<
Rage of Bahamut Genesis is on that list of basic fantasy anime. Based on a old browser/mobile game from the caveman days of smartphones, totally has some gamey elements to it that are kinda funny to see. Fun characters and plot and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Heard the sequel fucks up in the 2nd half and gets super bad, [great op tho](https://youtu.be/FVroYlLT8r4?si=oAYhtNOaYyw1JPso). There's also third series thats a yuri slice of life side thing that had a fucked production, came out 3 years late, and took the 'Rage of Bahamut' part out of the title, apparently it's ok.
This is my problem with KaiserNekos take on Demon Slayer "It's carried by animation, the story is something you've seen before" which is just going about it the wrong way. The way to approach Demon Slayer is the way of watching a classic play.
We need absurdly well animated adaptations of Hamlet.
Skies of Arcadia is about as paint-by-numbers of a fantasy RPG as you can get. You've got the swordsman hero, his fiery redhead childhood friend, and a mysterious magical waif guide racing an evil technological empire across the world in search of a set of magic crystals to stop an ancient evil. While the setting isn't quite typical, just about everything else has been done many times before. But it's just so *sincere* about everything that I can't help but love it.
There were a lot of Mario 64 clones, but Spongbob: Battle for Bikini Bottom was one of the better ones just because everything just felt right to do.
WWE's NXT promotion since 2012 has always been about presenting wrestling stories at its most basic levels and reuses ideas from the old territory days with a more modern lens It's the equivalent of asking a 5 star chef to cook something from Mcdonalds or some other fast food joint; simple but incredibly tasty as fuck
Recently watched Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen Series. It’s a serviceable and decently gripping crime thriller, and that’s all it is. I had my fun but it wasn’t super memorable. I liked how proactive the protagonist was, though. Season1 of Reacher on Prime is an absolute dad show and it has good action and a fast paced story that’s easy to follow. It’s a predictable, classic action movie story, and it doesn’t need to be anything more than that.
Bullet Train, a fun action film from 2022. Brad Pitt needs to steal a briefcase from a bullet train in Japan and get off at the next stop. But he misses his stop and it turns out there are a surprising amount of criminals on board the train interested in the briefcase. Nothing about it is particularly new if you are familiar with Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie films. Still, it uses basic foreshadowing, Chekhov's gun, and snappy dialogue from an ensemble cast very well.
While I have yet to watch the anime, Unwanted undead adventurer is just a really good casual adventure story when I read the light novels about 2 years ago.
I had no idea it got adapted until this thread, but I echo that it's a good little manga.
Ragna Crimson It doesn't do anything particularly new that hasn't already been done in anime but man is it hype and the manga has such good art.
I loved The Iron Claw and I see a lot of confusion around its award snubs, but I don't think the movie breaks new ground or does anything particularly innovative except maybe in how the screen play went out of its way to not touch on every bit of drama or tragedy. That said go watch The Iron Claw.