Which perspective should I use in my game?

Hi,

I'm currently a bit undecided about the visuals to implement in my game, so I thought a poll might be interesting to get some opinions ;D

1. Top-down 3/4

The well known projection from most SNES RPGs.

Advantages:
- Free roaming fells more or less "free"
- Familiar
- 4 diectional moving -> more freedom -> good spatial feel


Disadvantages:
- Smaller Sprites (Scale the sprites up too much and the viewport becomes claustrophobic)
- Player might feel less connected to his characters

Some examples:


Tales of Phantasia (SNES)


Phantasy Star IV (Mega Drive / Genesis)


2. Side-view

Like in Sorcerian, Faxanadu or Vakyrie Profile.

Advantages:
- Stronger connection to the characters
- Can be more detailed and scaled up without getting too claustrophobic.
- Gameplay can be more streamlined to limited control schemes


Disadvantages:
- Almost no spatial feel, navigation lacks "depth".
- Navigation in a bigger world might become tedious.

Some examples:


Valkyrie Profile (PS)


Sorcerian (DOS)


Cadash (Mega Drive / Genesis)


Unreal (Amiga)


This wouldn't affect the "RPGieness" of course, so battle will be turn based somehow, making a sidescroller will not result in the game being a platformer or an action game, I'm only thinking about the visuals here.

Any Input would b appreciated ;D

I think you should go with Top Down 3/4

A sidescroller perspective coupled with turn-based battles is likely to be jarring.

Also, I think the spatial feel of the world is pretty important, so you should go with the method that makes that easier.

If you do decided to go with side-view, there are some things you can do to make it less flat, and to make travel easier. One option is to have doors that lead to other layers of rooms. Even just one layer of rooms (inside vs outside) can make a difference. Consider Cave Story, which was 2D and only had one layer of rooms that you could enter via doors, but it still had a great spatial feel. Another example that comes to mind is Bionic Commando on NES. I feel like that game had a good spatial feel to it, even though the levels were pretty linear, the layout of some of the rooms and hallways sticks in my mind even to this day (and I haven't played it in like 13 years)

You can also use teleporters for fast travel-- this one applies to the top-down 3/4 view too. You don't have to make the player walk everywhere. You could have checkpoints that you can teleport in between once you have visited them once.

Are you considering a side-on view without jumping? What about ladders? It's a side-on view without much vertical movement that reduces movement from 2D to 1D and really reduces "spatial feel".

Of course, there are also many other projections similar to 3/4 but at different angles and slants.

What games are those screenshots from?

Ooh! I just remembered a game that might be relevant to this discussion.

Have you ever played Quest for Glory 4? It has a side-view aesthetic, but you can also move up and down, so it really has the best of both worlds in that regard.

It also has side-view (action) RPG battles that you transition to from the main map.

Thanks for your answers, and screenshots have captions now ;D

Well, jumping, ladders and the like would be there of course (;
Also I might build doors to let the player go to a parallel stack, that wouldn't be the problem.

Preferably I'd like to build an open, "seamless" world, like in Ultima VI, so the perspective seen in Quest for Glory (which reminds me again of Monkey Island or Final Fight) wouldn't do it (though it would be interesting to use prerendered backgrounds to produce some stunning visuals...).

To be honest, when I see the screen from Sorcerian (the mountains, second screenshot) it just gives me gooseumps (the good ones), and this would be impossible to do seamless in top down.

So it all comes down to mountains, really (;

Sounds like your heart is into side-scrolling. It will be more work to script, but if you are up to it, go for it!

When you mentioned turn-based battles, were you talking about the built-in OHR battles? Or scripting your own battles?

After reading my last post again I think I convinced myself too

The battle system would be hand-crafted, I have some rough ideas to make them work in side-view without breaking the flow too much.

Thanks for your input, finally I made my mind ;D

Oh, mountains! Every time I start thinking about the maps and graphics for a new game I want to put views of distant mountains into it (both for context and because I like them), and become saddened that I can't do it in 3/4 perspective except for clifftop scenes. It's just not right!

Well,
you could go this route (imagine mountains instead of sunset of course ;D ):

Chrono Trigger clearly wanted those mountains too, and they made it happen.

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My pronouns are they/them
Ps. I love my wife