So I downloaded some fan made SRPG, and wandering around randomly I took my level 1 party and ran into a level 37 boss who has more attack power than my entire party's HP put together, and she has an agility rating of 350 which means she'll probably take 15 turns for each turn I get (like a reverse of the Ramza speed trick), and I decided at this point I'm probably not supposed to here and just reset the game. Now, since I mentioned FFT, I'm sure people are aware of the event I'm thinking of, where you go to Wiegraf and then die horribly unless you are extremely overleveled or have some kind of really cheesy combination of abilities that prevent from you from ever dying. But that got me thinking. Even Sun Tzu can't get outmanuever his way against Wiegraf 1on1 if you put Ramza in any reasonable configuration, let alone this scenario where I am outleveled by 36 against the boss. The genre may be called Strategy RPG but they're more like RPG on a grid. A lot of so called SRPG don't even pretend to have a basic rock paper scissor model, not that that alone is enough to be called strategy.
For example, what class does the Chemist or Calculator counter in FFT? Pretty much nothing. Does a Ninja have any meaningful drawback to its high speed and attack rating? Is Orlandu the equivalent of atomic bomb in a rock paper scissor model? When the composition of your party basically makes no what difference whatsoever (after ruling out all the classes that have no purpose), that's not a strategy game. Out of all the games that classify under SRPG, the only thing I can think of where unit choice even matters is Fire Emblem, which is kind of ironic since you can't actually change your unit types in there. But if you're going up against a bunch of guys with Knight Slayers you probably want to leave your horseback types somewhere away and let the guys on foot take care of it. Of course even there, usually there is no counter to a powerful character no matter what. Shanan in FE4 counters basically everything except the 2 bosses designed to counter him so you can't just beat the game with one character.
So what game is a SRPG that includes, well, strategy? After thinking about it, I think the traditional pure strategy games are actually a better blend of Strategy and RPG than the RPG on a tile games on console. Take a game like Panzer General series. In People's General you can get a Stealth tank prototype. These guys have insane attack power, range, and everything else for a tank, but you still can't use a Stealth tank against an enemy helicopter and expect to win. You still can't directly assault cities with one at point blank range. It will win you a lot of tank to tank duels, though, and getting a Stealth tank to max XP makes dealing with everything a lot easier. In general in the PG series, a 15 overstrengthed unit is worth at least as much as 2 units at 10 strength with no XP, but even such elite units are destroyed quickly when fighting the wrong units (a 15 strength bomber sure isn't beating a 10 strength fighter), and since overstrength takes a long time to built up, you can spend a lot of time building a few units up and then get a bad mismatch and now you're zapped to strength 8 and there goes all your effort. Building up the 15 overstrength elite unit is very RPG-like, and yet that effort can be countered by strategy. To do well in such games you have to be good at both the strategy and the RPG part. I was never good at overstrengthing my units in PG series since I don't look up how much time you got for Major Victories, and realistically you're not going to get a Major Victory on the final scenario in PG series without an army of max overstrength units. But strategy alone can at least get you a minor victory. Likewise if you got no strategy but good RPG skills, that's probably enough to get you a minor victory too. This is a sharp contrast from console SRPG where the only skill you need is the skill to level up your units.
For example, what class does the Chemist or Calculator counter in FFT? Pretty much nothing. Does a Ninja have any meaningful drawback to its high speed and attack rating? Is Orlandu the equivalent of atomic bomb in a rock paper scissor model? When the composition of your party basically makes no what difference whatsoever (after ruling out all the classes that have no purpose), that's not a strategy game. Out of all the games that classify under SRPG, the only thing I can think of where unit choice even matters is Fire Emblem, which is kind of ironic since you can't actually change your unit types in there. But if you're going up against a bunch of guys with Knight Slayers you probably want to leave your horseback types somewhere away and let the guys on foot take care of it. Of course even there, usually there is no counter to a powerful character no matter what. Shanan in FE4 counters basically everything except the 2 bosses designed to counter him so you can't just beat the game with one character.
So what game is a SRPG that includes, well, strategy? After thinking about it, I think the traditional pure strategy games are actually a better blend of Strategy and RPG than the RPG on a tile games on console. Take a game like Panzer General series. In People's General you can get a Stealth tank prototype. These guys have insane attack power, range, and everything else for a tank, but you still can't use a Stealth tank against an enemy helicopter and expect to win. You still can't directly assault cities with one at point blank range. It will win you a lot of tank to tank duels, though, and getting a Stealth tank to max XP makes dealing with everything a lot easier. In general in the PG series, a 15 overstrengthed unit is worth at least as much as 2 units at 10 strength with no XP, but even such elite units are destroyed quickly when fighting the wrong units (a 15 strength bomber sure isn't beating a 10 strength fighter), and since overstrength takes a long time to built up, you can spend a lot of time building a few units up and then get a bad mismatch and now you're zapped to strength 8 and there goes all your effort. Building up the 15 overstrength elite unit is very RPG-like, and yet that effort can be countered by strategy. To do well in such games you have to be good at both the strategy and the RPG part. I was never good at overstrengthing my units in PG series since I don't look up how much time you got for Major Victories, and realistically you're not going to get a Major Victory on the final scenario in PG series without an army of max overstrength units. But strategy alone can at least get you a minor victory. Likewise if you got no strategy but good RPG skills, that's probably enough to get you a minor victory too. This is a sharp contrast from console SRPG where the only skill you need is the skill to level up your units.
