Warning: Not Organized!
Combat, it seems to me, must be the foundation of any action RPG - that being what distinguishes them from more cerebral games like, oh, the Final Fantasy franchise.
Thus, start with the system for that. Gameplay takes place in a roughly isometric view - that is, things are three-d, but characters move and interact with each other essentially in two-d. Forward, back, side-to-side. Facing matters - figure that each character has a ninety-degree front arc they can attack within, an additional forty-five degrees to either side of that that they can defend against attacks from, and can only duck away from things coming from the other half of their world.
Controls are:
Joystick 1 - horizontal movement.
Joystick 2 - horizontal facing; can be overridden by a target lock function.
Shoulder triggers - cycle fighting styles.
4 main buttons - attacks.
The attacks correspond and interact with your character's balance - that is, say, if they're leaning back and you hit 'side attack' you'll get something quick and feint-like. Leaning forward and hitting 'side-then-rear' yields a spinning roundhouse - ideally, they should interact intuitively with the choice of attack and the movement modifiers the player can add with their joystick. This tactical element, plus the choice of different styles and the movement of characters and foes on the battlefield, should make for some pretty damned interesting combat without being really overwhelming.
Graphics and noncombatant behavior should be deliberately primitive, to save on processor time and memory space - needed because the maps should be huge - no, huge, to the extent that buildings have no tardising and there really are entire cities out there - and pretty much freely accessible. Even with modern hardware and a well-optimized engine, that won't be easy.
Obviously, there won't be much to do in most parts of those huge cities, but one of the core elements of the game's appeal would be the ability to add, like, entirely new trunks of story tree to the existing framework. That is, if the initial release version has three potential branches of its first major decision point, all of which go in completely different directions, the first expansion pack could add two more there and another during the endgame, and so on...
I'm really tempted to specify text-only dialog just to make this fractal expansion of plot easier.
So, game starts with you picking one of three characters to control, tweaking their build, features, hairstyle, and starting look to taste, then walking them through individualized tutorials that introduces you to their existing personalities, backgrounds, and abilities. They are...
ASIMA - Princess of Monta, heir apparent to the richest single ruler in the known world. She gets called in from daily arms practice by her father, who tells her that the treaty with the Jewel Kingdom looks to be going through and that she'll need to go off to meet her husband, and here's some advice about winning friends and influencing people. Disputing this order will only become available in an expansion. Playing Asima gets a run-down of the battle and character influence systems. She knows how to fight using a sword and shield. By default Asima is tall, blonde, and *koff* statuesque - the sort of woman who looks like she should be carrying a spear and the name Brunhilda.
ZARA - Harem-serf of the Knight of the Northmost Bend of the Deltan Kingdom, and undercover agent of the secret slave rebellion army. She undergoes a harrowing series of trials that test her readiness to become one of the army's elite shock troopers, the collapses into bed to sleep the sleep of the just. Playing Zara gets a run-down of the battle, crafting, and sneaking mechanics. She's also the only one of the original core characters whose gender changes depending on the player's setup choices - though either way is short, slim, and dark-haired. Zara starts out knowing a capoeria-esque martial art that includes hitting people with chains on top of bare-handed work and how to use a sling to deadly effect.
BASIR - Military officer of the Jewel Kingdom and one of its' crown's many nephews, sent to Monta to act as Princess Asima's guide on her journey to his homeland. He spends the entire tutorial getting beat up - pardon, 'sparred with' - by her bodyguards to see whether he's worthy to help protect her. Playing Basir earns you knowledge of the battle and magic rules. He starts out knowing basic short-sword techniques and what you might call assault magics - ie, he can blow stuff up - but isn't particularly good at either and looks almost aggressively average.
None of the three explain how to do anything to level your character. This is because there is nothing to do to level - it all happens automatically.
The speed, accuracy, and efficiency of any given action, along with, inversely and if applicable, the chance of your target blocking it successfully, are determined by what percentage of a hundred possible skill points your character has in that skill, which in turn start out at some minimal value and are added to, one tiny fraction at a time, whenever that skill is used.
That is, whenever you do something, like attack using a particular style, the game rolls a number, adds the base offense for your current style, adds your skill at that style, adds a potentially positive-or-negative modifier dependant on your difficulty setting and how often you've been dying recently, then compares that number to your target's roll+base defense+skill. Then, having determined who hit, it loads and plays a pair of matched fight animations whose ornateness would depend on whether you have high, medium, or low fighting skill. Carrying out an attack or moving quickly drains your endurance bar (whose size is determined by your endurance skill, which grows depending on how often you drain it past its standing skill percentage) - as its level lowers past maybe the last quarter, you start stacking up penalties to movement, actions, etc, leading up to essentially paralysis by 100% drain. Endurance drain varies by fighting style - empty hand sips daintily, magics gulp it down such that, at the beginning, you can kill three quarters of your stamina on a single lightning bolt or heal spell.
Your other relevant bar is blood supply. It does not regenerate outside of 'rest' mode, and, unless bound, wounds keep bleeding until they've doubled their original 'damage'. Hits are roughly tracked by body parts - limb hits have half damage but impede movement/certain attacks, head and heart hits have major damage multipliers but are only possible if there's a major difference between their attack and your defense...
New skills have to be gained through RP.
Romance and difficulty would be the 'campaign start' options - Three toggles ([ ]: Boys, [ ]:Girls, [ ]:Moresomes) and a slider.
So the game starts off with these three running through a rainforest to escape from the ravening hounds of a kingdom who badly want there not to be an alliance between Monta and the Jewel Kings, and incidentally could they have their sex-toy back while they're at it?
Along the way of this first phase they meet and possibly recruit:
ESSAM - Can be either one of Asima's bodyguard or her prime handmaiden, depending on your starting choices. Either way, though, E starts with lots of endurance and a good bit of the Great Honking Sword skill, making him a grade-A melee heavy. Red hair, even taller and stronger than her boss as a girl and an outright hominid mountain as a guy.
SHORU - Imagine your classically itty-bitty bit of Japanese Samurai Nothing... dressed as an Apache. S is primarily an archer, but has iaijutsu-like sword skills to back them up, along with certain divination-like spells.
OG - Wild (wo)man, like a short stocky version of Naruto's Inuzuka clan, with kanabo and the only healing spells you'll find in the core campaign.
It's not possible to switch to control characters other than your core one.
...I'm out of talking points that don't require dealing up great chunks of plot, which I don't think I have time for.
Thanks for listening, Ja!
===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
Combat, it seems to me, must be the foundation of any action RPG - that being what distinguishes them from more cerebral games like, oh, the Final Fantasy franchise.
Thus, start with the system for that. Gameplay takes place in a roughly isometric view - that is, things are three-d, but characters move and interact with each other essentially in two-d. Forward, back, side-to-side. Facing matters - figure that each character has a ninety-degree front arc they can attack within, an additional forty-five degrees to either side of that that they can defend against attacks from, and can only duck away from things coming from the other half of their world.
Controls are:
Joystick 1 - horizontal movement.
Joystick 2 - horizontal facing; can be overridden by a target lock function.
Shoulder triggers - cycle fighting styles.
4 main buttons - attacks.
The attacks correspond and interact with your character's balance - that is, say, if they're leaning back and you hit 'side attack' you'll get something quick and feint-like. Leaning forward and hitting 'side-then-rear' yields a spinning roundhouse - ideally, they should interact intuitively with the choice of attack and the movement modifiers the player can add with their joystick. This tactical element, plus the choice of different styles and the movement of characters and foes on the battlefield, should make for some pretty damned interesting combat without being really overwhelming.
Graphics and noncombatant behavior should be deliberately primitive, to save on processor time and memory space - needed because the maps should be huge - no, huge, to the extent that buildings have no tardising and there really are entire cities out there - and pretty much freely accessible. Even with modern hardware and a well-optimized engine, that won't be easy.
Obviously, there won't be much to do in most parts of those huge cities, but one of the core elements of the game's appeal would be the ability to add, like, entirely new trunks of story tree to the existing framework. That is, if the initial release version has three potential branches of its first major decision point, all of which go in completely different directions, the first expansion pack could add two more there and another during the endgame, and so on...
I'm really tempted to specify text-only dialog just to make this fractal expansion of plot easier.
So, game starts with you picking one of three characters to control, tweaking their build, features, hairstyle, and starting look to taste, then walking them through individualized tutorials that introduces you to their existing personalities, backgrounds, and abilities. They are...
ASIMA - Princess of Monta, heir apparent to the richest single ruler in the known world. She gets called in from daily arms practice by her father, who tells her that the treaty with the Jewel Kingdom looks to be going through and that she'll need to go off to meet her husband, and here's some advice about winning friends and influencing people. Disputing this order will only become available in an expansion. Playing Asima gets a run-down of the battle and character influence systems. She knows how to fight using a sword and shield. By default Asima is tall, blonde, and *koff* statuesque - the sort of woman who looks like she should be carrying a spear and the name Brunhilda.
ZARA - Harem-serf of the Knight of the Northmost Bend of the Deltan Kingdom, and undercover agent of the secret slave rebellion army. She undergoes a harrowing series of trials that test her readiness to become one of the army's elite shock troopers, the collapses into bed to sleep the sleep of the just. Playing Zara gets a run-down of the battle, crafting, and sneaking mechanics. She's also the only one of the original core characters whose gender changes depending on the player's setup choices - though either way is short, slim, and dark-haired. Zara starts out knowing a capoeria-esque martial art that includes hitting people with chains on top of bare-handed work and how to use a sling to deadly effect.
BASIR - Military officer of the Jewel Kingdom and one of its' crown's many nephews, sent to Monta to act as Princess Asima's guide on her journey to his homeland. He spends the entire tutorial getting beat up - pardon, 'sparred with' - by her bodyguards to see whether he's worthy to help protect her. Playing Basir earns you knowledge of the battle and magic rules. He starts out knowing basic short-sword techniques and what you might call assault magics - ie, he can blow stuff up - but isn't particularly good at either and looks almost aggressively average.
None of the three explain how to do anything to level your character. This is because there is nothing to do to level - it all happens automatically.
The speed, accuracy, and efficiency of any given action, along with, inversely and if applicable, the chance of your target blocking it successfully, are determined by what percentage of a hundred possible skill points your character has in that skill, which in turn start out at some minimal value and are added to, one tiny fraction at a time, whenever that skill is used.
That is, whenever you do something, like attack using a particular style, the game rolls a number, adds the base offense for your current style, adds your skill at that style, adds a potentially positive-or-negative modifier dependant on your difficulty setting and how often you've been dying recently, then compares that number to your target's roll+base defense+skill. Then, having determined who hit, it loads and plays a pair of matched fight animations whose ornateness would depend on whether you have high, medium, or low fighting skill. Carrying out an attack or moving quickly drains your endurance bar (whose size is determined by your endurance skill, which grows depending on how often you drain it past its standing skill percentage) - as its level lowers past maybe the last quarter, you start stacking up penalties to movement, actions, etc, leading up to essentially paralysis by 100% drain. Endurance drain varies by fighting style - empty hand sips daintily, magics gulp it down such that, at the beginning, you can kill three quarters of your stamina on a single lightning bolt or heal spell.
Your other relevant bar is blood supply. It does not regenerate outside of 'rest' mode, and, unless bound, wounds keep bleeding until they've doubled their original 'damage'. Hits are roughly tracked by body parts - limb hits have half damage but impede movement/certain attacks, head and heart hits have major damage multipliers but are only possible if there's a major difference between their attack and your defense...
New skills have to be gained through RP.
Romance and difficulty would be the 'campaign start' options - Three toggles ([ ]: Boys, [ ]:Girls, [ ]:Moresomes) and a slider.
So the game starts off with these three running through a rainforest to escape from the ravening hounds of a kingdom who badly want there not to be an alliance between Monta and the Jewel Kings, and incidentally could they have their sex-toy back while they're at it?
Along the way of this first phase they meet and possibly recruit:
ESSAM - Can be either one of Asima's bodyguard or her prime handmaiden, depending on your starting choices. Either way, though, E starts with lots of endurance and a good bit of the Great Honking Sword skill, making him a grade-A melee heavy. Red hair, even taller and stronger than her boss as a girl and an outright hominid mountain as a guy.
SHORU - Imagine your classically itty-bitty bit of Japanese Samurai Nothing... dressed as an Apache. S is primarily an archer, but has iaijutsu-like sword skills to back them up, along with certain divination-like spells.
OG - Wild (wo)man, like a short stocky version of Naruto's Inuzuka clan, with kanabo and the only healing spells you'll find in the core campaign.
It's not possible to switch to control characters other than your core one.
...I'm out of talking points that don't require dealing up great chunks of plot, which I don't think I have time for.
Thanks for listening, Ja!
===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."