Single-character games can be delightful, of course, and your friends aren't right or wrong to prefer them; it's just what they enjoy.demeisen wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2018, 6:32 pmOh, you'd be amazed at how much pushback I've seen from gamers about [party RPGs]. I've seen games blasted in reviews for being "too complex" in requiring the player create several characters. I've seen similar around expecting the player to manage several characters: they prefer just one. I have friends very much in that mindset: they want one PC and one only.
What is necessary and foundational to a "party RPG" in my opinion is the concept of the "Ensemble Cast", with a group of protagonists who have roughly equal "camera time" and importance to the story. If a game only allows for only one created PC with the rest of the group filled out by CNPC sidekicks, that does not fulfill my conditions for being a party RPG, regardless of how many units the player manipulates on the battle screen.
Perhaps the most persistent recurring joke on RPG Codex is "What is RPG?", referring to the apparent truism that there is no one definition of role-playing game that a majority can agree on. There are doubtless hundreds of games that call themselves RPGs nowadays that would make most of us laugh at the use of the term. It's evolving into new usages every day. Let's hope inXile continues to remember what it used to mean ...