Tactical Role-playing Game - Game Design

Game Design

This sub-genre of role-playing game principally refers to games which incorporate elements from strategy games as an alternative to traditional role-playing game (RPG) systems. Like standard RPGs, the player controls a finite party and battles a similar number of enemies. And like other RPGs, death is usually temporary. But this genre incorporates strategic gameplay such as tactical movement on an isometric grid. Unlike other video game genres, tactical RPGs tend not to feature multiplayer play.

A distinct difference between tactical RPGs and traditional RPGs is the lack of exploration. For instance, Final Fantasy Tactics does away with the typical third-person exploration to towns and dungeons that are typical in a Final Fantasy game. Instead of exploration, there is an emphasis on battle strategy. Players are able to build and train characters to use in battle, utilizing different classes, including warriors and magic users, depending on the game, Characters normally gain experience points from battle and grow stronger and games like Final Fantasy Tactics award characters secondary experience points which can be used to advance in specific character classes. Battles will have specific winning conditions, such as defeating all the enemies on the map, that the player must accomplish before the next map will become available. In between battles, players can access their characters to equip them, change classes, train them, depending on the game.