Both are inspired while playing Wild Arms Code F, but not necessarily that related to the game...
First, ever since about FF7 we decided in RPG it's not that good of a idea for your hero to swing a sword, and then have the slash magically hit the enemy across space. So, in most RPGs we have our characters doing some animation that involves running up to the enemy. But, since it is mandated by heaven that enemies and heroes have to always stand in a fixed position, that means you can't just have our heroes stay by the enemy after running up to them. Therefore, our heroes always magically hop/run/teleport back to where they started after running up to the enemy.
This is, of course, a very minor thing, but it has always been very immersive breaking for me. There are some games that try to break away from them (WA:ACF being one of them), and I think Skies of Arcadia handles it best by keeping everything in the same position as their animation look like, but adding the idle attack/defend animation so it doesn't look like your heroes are just standing by the enemy having a nice chat until you execute the next command. Anything that gives the facade that in these battles there is actually movement and action, as opposed to a 'your turn my turn' deal, I think, is a step in the right direction. A real time game like Star Ocean would not have this problem, but most RPGs are still turn-based. This doesn't seem like a terribly hard thing to do, and I don't think you can get worse than the magic hop back to formation that just about every RPG does.
Second, most RPGs seem to be going on the trend of doing away with equipment and money. It's certainly been a while since I played a game where you need money for anything or equipment actually matters beyond filling some quota of secrets to discover for replay value. Now maybe this is an arachic concept that only stalls the game that should be done away with like mazes. But what do we have in replace of these timesinks? The RPGs of today are certainly longer than they were before, so it's not like we're losing the old ways to make way for some new innovative gameplay. In that case, why not let us level up to buy equipment and whatnot? While relatively few people enjoy crawling through mazes, it's safe to say that a lot of people do enjoy item collecting, stat building, and so on. Games like Diablo 2, after all, pretty much only exists as an item collecting/stat building game. In a game like Grandia, what drives the game isn't the story (at least I'd like to think it's not, because it's pretty bad) but the fact that if you play more you get your sword level 30 or wind level 25 abilities, and you get that you can work on the level 31 sword ability and so on.
Besides, most games just end up recreating an item based game with a different name. Instead of getting a new powerful weapon it'd be 3 Strength+4 spheres in FFX or junctioning Ultima to strength in FF8, and I think most of us rather see that our ability to kill stuff gone up significantly because of our new shiny sword as opposed to some obscure system that ends up accomplishing the same thing. In Wild Arms, when Cecilia understands what love is she also gets the Love Rune that greatly increases her stats and turns her into an instant powerhouse. In the remixed version, there is an equipment-less system so the expected power jump is simply integrated into her levels. While the two characters in both game might be similarly powerful, I think it is a lot more meaningful to see a character change noticeably in the original Wild Arms, as opposed to the equipment-less system of the remix that has no choice but to just integrate the power increases into the levels themselves.
If someone has a great idea to replace the equipment system of character progression, by all means go for it. But so far this doesn't appear the case, and if developers can't think of anything interesting, I rather have a system where getting a new sword makes me powerful as opposed to whatever crazy things they can conjure up. Likewise, I like getting money and buy new stuff, and if there is no compelling reason to make money meaningless, then I'd like to have the option of money being meaningful.
First, ever since about FF7 we decided in RPG it's not that good of a idea for your hero to swing a sword, and then have the slash magically hit the enemy across space. So, in most RPGs we have our characters doing some animation that involves running up to the enemy. But, since it is mandated by heaven that enemies and heroes have to always stand in a fixed position, that means you can't just have our heroes stay by the enemy after running up to them. Therefore, our heroes always magically hop/run/teleport back to where they started after running up to the enemy.
This is, of course, a very minor thing, but it has always been very immersive breaking for me. There are some games that try to break away from them (WA:ACF being one of them), and I think Skies of Arcadia handles it best by keeping everything in the same position as their animation look like, but adding the idle attack/defend animation so it doesn't look like your heroes are just standing by the enemy having a nice chat until you execute the next command. Anything that gives the facade that in these battles there is actually movement and action, as opposed to a 'your turn my turn' deal, I think, is a step in the right direction. A real time game like Star Ocean would not have this problem, but most RPGs are still turn-based. This doesn't seem like a terribly hard thing to do, and I don't think you can get worse than the magic hop back to formation that just about every RPG does.
Second, most RPGs seem to be going on the trend of doing away with equipment and money. It's certainly been a while since I played a game where you need money for anything or equipment actually matters beyond filling some quota of secrets to discover for replay value. Now maybe this is an arachic concept that only stalls the game that should be done away with like mazes. But what do we have in replace of these timesinks? The RPGs of today are certainly longer than they were before, so it's not like we're losing the old ways to make way for some new innovative gameplay. In that case, why not let us level up to buy equipment and whatnot? While relatively few people enjoy crawling through mazes, it's safe to say that a lot of people do enjoy item collecting, stat building, and so on. Games like Diablo 2, after all, pretty much only exists as an item collecting/stat building game. In a game like Grandia, what drives the game isn't the story (at least I'd like to think it's not, because it's pretty bad) but the fact that if you play more you get your sword level 30 or wind level 25 abilities, and you get that you can work on the level 31 sword ability and so on.
Besides, most games just end up recreating an item based game with a different name. Instead of getting a new powerful weapon it'd be 3 Strength+4 spheres in FFX or junctioning Ultima to strength in FF8, and I think most of us rather see that our ability to kill stuff gone up significantly because of our new shiny sword as opposed to some obscure system that ends up accomplishing the same thing. In Wild Arms, when Cecilia understands what love is she also gets the Love Rune that greatly increases her stats and turns her into an instant powerhouse. In the remixed version, there is an equipment-less system so the expected power jump is simply integrated into her levels. While the two characters in both game might be similarly powerful, I think it is a lot more meaningful to see a character change noticeably in the original Wild Arms, as opposed to the equipment-less system of the remix that has no choice but to just integrate the power increases into the levels themselves.
If someone has a great idea to replace the equipment system of character progression, by all means go for it. But so far this doesn't appear the case, and if developers can't think of anything interesting, I rather have a system where getting a new sword makes me powerful as opposed to whatever crazy things they can conjure up. Likewise, I like getting money and buy new stuff, and if there is no compelling reason to make money meaningless, then I'd like to have the option of money being meaningful.
