How much depth is there to this game?

[deebic021]

Full disclosure, never played Paper Mario, and simply not interested in it either. Eith that out of the way, I was a huge fan of South Park: The Stick of Truth and I'm looking for something to similar to that.

Here I found Bug Fables, and I'm playing the demo. It is okay, though I don't know why I'm so attracted to it (ig I really just like the art style tbh). Anyway, my biggest concern is that the game is on train tracks, such that it is more adventure than it is RPG. I'm not seeing any character progression here, except some new abilities, and there doesn't appear to be any kind of equipment eg weapons and armor. In this regard, it feels more like a metroidvania in the sense that you get new abilities (some of which are required for overworld navigation) with rpg elements than a proper rpg (south park tsot and pokemon have the overworld ability-gating to in all fairness). Is the depth purely tactical, or is there any kind of strategic progression/customization aspect here?

For instance in TSoT, there are dozens of weapons and armor that change up the character's abilities and stats and appearence. It just seems the medals are very limited in this department...

[Aldelaro5]

I never played stick of truth, but I can speak a lot for bug fables without involving paper mario.

Basically, most of your progressions as far as raw stats goes is when you rank up, you can choose to give 1 max hp to everyone, get + 3 tp (your skills points) or + 3 medal points. It's only one of these 3 you choose every rank up.

The medal points part is important because it's the game's equipment system. How it works is you get equipment pieces called medals that can either be equipped on someone, equipped to the entire party or unequipped (it depends on the medal which way you equip it). The thing is you can't equip everything: each medals requires some medal points (mp) to equip it and your total mp dictates how much you can spend at any given time. This means you gotta decide what medals you want to keep at the expense of others until you get more mp to equip more at once.

And these medals is where most of the interesting strategies comes in: they can be quite deep. While you have some typical TP+ and HP+ (only on one member though so it doesn't replace the rank up bonus of HP), most of them are tradeoffs. For example, there's one that increases your attack, but decreases your defense. Another would make your super blocks worth more as they make you take less damages. Another would allow you to use a skill on a specify member, etc... It can get wild especially when you start to combine things. Some are mostly benefits, but can cost more and others needs you to build around them for them to work effectively. There's really a lot of variety in these so it's not a typical RPG where your gears makes number bigger better: it's mostly decisions you make when it comes to your build. Since you can toggle medals at any time except during battle, you can easilly play around with them (on bosses, the game offers you the option to retry after changing your medals).

You get medals as you find them, but you can also buy them and the game limits how many and which ones are available throughout the game. It means the difficulty curve and the stuff you have access to is tuned to make sense. About that: there's a special medal you can get in the first 5 minutes: hard mode. This one is the game's difficulty system, but it's interesting because it is a 0 cost medal that makes things harder, but in deep ways. While you have the usual "enemies have more hp and hits your for more", it's precisely tuned with AI changes with tighter block timings tuned per attack.

So you're right that there's no "weapons" and "armors". The attacks you have are your basic and the skills you get (which you do get them as you progress or rank up) and the only way to get defense is through medals or other effects (like a defense up condition). However, don't let that fool you because while medals is one of the simplest gears mechanics I seen, it's also one of the most efficient one: it's crazy how deep you can get with this and it's very simple to use.

However, it would be wrong to say it's a metroidvania: the game is very linear in progressions. There is a BUNCH of optionals quests you can do and other things, but the main plot and story is very linear. The progression you get is also very linear in nature and tends to go towards a curve even if there's obviously going to be a bit of variances depending.

Based on what you described with stick of truth, I'd say it's close to what you liked. The thing to remember is the demo is only the first chapter and it just so happens that you see a lot more medals once that chapter ends and you get into ch2. Ch3 however opens up even more. What I am trying to say is the demo isn't very representative of the whole set of medals the game gives you: they are basic and you don't even tend to rank up mp much in the very early game. In other words, dw about that, it gets MUCH deeper.

Interestingly, I have heard that the south park games are inspired by paper mario in mechanics. If that's the case, I can't speak on how they compare, but one thing for sure: bug fables those same ideas in very interesting ways mechanically. While it's DEFINTELY not perfect (it gets weird if you start to look very deeply), it's one of the best implementations of the ideas that I've seen.

Hope that helps!

[deebic021]

Originally posted by Aldelaro5:

I never played stick of truth, but I can speak a lot for bug fables without involving paper mario.

Basically, most of your progressions as far as raw stats goes is when you rank up, you can choose to give 1 max hp to everyone, get + 3 tp (your skills points) or + 3 medal points. It's only one of these 3 you choose every rank up.

The medal points part is important because it's the game's equipment system. How it works is you get equipment pieces called medals that can either be equipped on someone, equipped to the entire party or unequipped (it depends on the medal which way you equip it). The thing is you can't equip everything: each medals requires some medal points (mp) to equip it and your total mp dictates how much you can spend at any given time. This means you gotta decide what medals you want to keep at the expense of others until you get more mp to equip more at once.

And these medals is where most of the interesting strategies comes in: they can be quite deep. While you have some typical TP+ and HP+ (only on one member though so it doesn't replace the rank up bonus of HP), most of them are tradeoffs. For example, there's one that increases your attack, but decreases your defense. Another would make your super blocks worth more as they make you take less damages. Another would allow you to use a skill on a specify member, etc... It can get wild especially when you start to combine things. Some are mostly benefits, but can cost more and others needs you to build around them for them to work effectively. There's really a lot of variety in these so it's not a typical RPG where your gears makes number bigger better: it's mostly decisions you make when it comes to your build. Since you can toggle medals at any time except during battle, you can easilly play around with them (on bosses, the game offers you the option to retry after changing your medals).

You get medals as you find them, but you can also buy them and the game limits how many and which ones are available throughout the game. It means the difficulty curve and the stuff you have access to is tuned to make sense. About that: there's a special medal you can get in the first 5 minutes: hard mode. This one is the game's difficulty system, but it's interesting because it is a 0 cost medal that makes things harder, but in deep ways. While you have the usual "enemies have more hp and hits your for more", it's precisely tuned with AI changes with tighter block timings tuned per attack.

So you're right that there's no "weapons" and "armors". The attacks you have are your basic and the skills you get (which you do get them as you progress or rank up) and the only way to get defense is through medals or other effects (like a defense up condition). However, don't let that fool you because while medals is one of the simplest gears mechanics I seen, it's also one of the most efficient one: it's crazy how deep you can get with this and it's very simple to use.

However, it would be wrong to say it's a metroidvania: the game is very linear in progressions. There is a BUNCH of optionals quests you can do and other things, but the main plot and story is very linear. The progression you get is also very linear in nature and tends to go towards a curve even if there's obviously going to be a bit of variances depending.

Based on what you described with stick of truth, I'd say it's close to what you liked. The thing to remember is the demo is only the first chapter and it just so happens that you see a lot more medals once that chapter ends and you get into ch2. Ch3 however opens up even more. What I am trying to say is the demo isn't very representative of the whole set of medals the game gives you: they are basic and you don't even tend to rank up mp much in the very early game. In other words, dw about that, it gets MUCH deeper.

Interestingly, I have heard that the south park games are inspired by paper mario in mechanics. If that's the case, I can't speak on how they compare, but one thing for sure: bug fables those same ideas in very interesting ways mechanically. While it's DEFINTELY not perfect (it gets weird if you start to look very deeply), it's one of the best implementations of the ideas that I've seen.

Hope that helps!

Thank you