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Which RPGs allow you to fight in huge battles?

For discussing role-playing video games, you know, the ones with combat.
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Val the Moofia Boss
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Which RPGs allow you to fight in huge battles?

Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

Besides MMOs and Mount & Blade, which RPGs allow you to fight huge battles? Not in a cutscene but in gameplay?

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Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss on March 15th, 2025, 21:34, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by rusty_shackleford »

I did a small scale skirmish in KCD and it caused me to crash twice so I gave up trying to complete the quest

answer: not KCD
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Post by TKVNC »

Well, you already said M&B, so that's the main one gone.

Kenshi... Kind of? You can get some pretty huge brawls going on, but they're just skirmishes, I suppose.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Goldbox games could have rather large battles, I'd guess the upper limit is somewhere in the dozens of combatants? Not a big goldbox expert tho.
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Post by TKVNC »

It also depends on how narrowly you want to define RPG; I'm sure someone could argue Total War is an RPG if you push them enough.
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Post by Valter »

Both Pathfinders have some "defend this area" missions where you fight an unreasonable amount of enemies.

I remember the Skyrim Civil War quest having some larger scale skirmishes to take control of the forts.

Not much else comes to mind, however.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Valter wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:56
I remember the Skyrim Civil War quest having some larger scale skirmishes to take control of the forts.
last time I played skyrim I actually got far enough to do the civil war part and it was one small battle of like 8v8 then the entire quest ended and I was confused as ****
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Post by Oyster Sauce »

There's a fun one in PoE 1. It's just one scene though, and if you do too well in the CYOA part it basically wins the fight for you.

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Post by Oyster Sauce »

The tavern defense scene in WotR takes like half an hour in turn-based mode and is a good time

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Post by Oyster Sauce »

The Last Remnant is a JRPG where your party members lead squads, which visually makes the battles seem larger. There's also battlefield maneuvering and I think you can customize your generic mooks a bit.

Last edited by Oyster Sauce on January 17th, 2025, 20:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Oyster Sauce wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:59
There's a fun one in PoE 1. It's just one scene though, and if you do too well in the CYOA part it basically wins the fight for you.

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poe has some good parts that don't feel like they belong with the game and were made by someone else

@Val the Moofia Boss are you including games that have large scale battles but they use a separate tactical layer to represent them, or nah?
Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance has this, it has two separate combat mechanics, one for small scale and one for mass combat.
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Post by Oyster Sauce »

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:36
I did a small scale skirmish in KCD and it caused me to crash twice so I gave up trying to complete the quest

answer: not KCD
Did the first one the other day and found myself slashing at fake enemies who were just there for show.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Oyster Sauce wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 20:05
rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:36
I did a small scale skirmish in KCD and it caused me to crash twice so I gave up trying to complete the quest

answer: not KCD
Did the first one the other day and found myself slashing at fake enemies who were just there for show.
Yeah I ran ahead in one of my tries and tried to shoot them with an arrow and the arrow went right thru them. Was disappointing as ****.
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Post by Oyster Sauce »

Kingdom Under Fire has more RPG elements than something like Dynasty Warriors (I think, I've only played one of them)

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Post by Tweed »

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:54
Goldbox games could have rather large battles, I'd guess the upper limit is somewhere in the dozens of combatants? Not a big goldbox expert tho.
I was going to mention KotC and KotC 2, some of the battles there are massive, but it's your small party against huge armies. It's all about tactics, not army vs army.
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Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

Oyster Sauce wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 20:04
The Last Remnant is a JRPG where your party members lead squads, which visually makes the battles seem larger. There's also battlefield maneuvering and I think you can customize your generic mooks a bit.

Yeah I enjoyed the Last Remnant. I remember there being a fight in the desert near the tower/ruins where you could see more people in the background as 2D textures. The game was quite frustrating to play, even with TLRplanner to force spawn the quest mobs and force drop their entire loot tables.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 20:05
@Val the Moofia Boss are you including games that have large scale battles but they use a separate tactical layer to represent them, or nah?
I was mainly thinking of games where you continue the normal gameplay of controlling your character, but in a large scale situation with lots of NPCs and enemies to pick out. If we include games that have a separate battle gameplay system to represent large battles, then I would include Suikoden.

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Suikoden 2, regular battle gameplay of controlling a 6 man party.

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Suikoden 2, war maps in SRPG style.
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Post by MrTwinkls »

Final multi-stage battles in the end of each act from Expeditions: Rome.
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Post by TKVNC »

TKVNC wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:53
Well, you already said M&B, so that's the main one gone.

Kenshi... Kind of? You can get some pretty huge brawls going on, but they're just skirmishes, I suppose.
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Thought I'd back up my endless Kenshi shilling with a SS
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Post by Norfleet »

Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:28
Besides MMOs and Mount & Blade, which RPGs allow you to fight huge battles? Not in a cutscene but in gameplay?
Before we can answer that, you'd have to define "huge battles", and how strictly you define "RPG". Is the hugeness of a battle defined by the number of people? The number of units? There are Tacticool RPGs where you have individual hero characters that battle with and against whole units, but these typically only contain maybe a half-a-dozen units of a dozen figures, so we're talking on the order of about a hundred people only. Is that "huge"? What about games where your character commands some kind of large warship against other large warships? Those could involve thousands of people, but again, about the same number of actual discrete units, and while they have all the relevant trappings of an RPG (stats, skills, loot), you might not consider them as such due to the lack of actually running around on foot with your dude inside or outside of your ship.

But if you want an RPG that absolutely fits the bill, no questions asked, I suggest RPG-7. Released in 1958, it's an oldie but goody, still played today, with lots of expansions and mods to choose from, tons of re-releases and re-masters, and allows you to fight in anything from small battles of only a few people, all the way up to absolutely massive battles involving hundreds of thousands of people. The Ukraine server is currently very popular.
Last edited by Norfleet on January 19th, 2025, 03:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by 1998 »



They made a huge deal of their crowd combat. Game looks pretty **** though.

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Post by Dorateen »

With abstracted combat, like the kind found in blobbers, you can fight battles with hundreds of enemies.
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Post by Magick »

Oyster Sauce wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 20:04
The Last Remnant is a JRPG where your party members lead squads, which visually makes the battles seem larger. There's also battlefield maneuvering and I think you can customize your generic mooks a bit.

Yep. It wants to "play itself" in some ways, (the auto weapon choosing / upgrading, grrr!) but you can override that (a bit) by tweaking config files. The skill choice in battle is annoying until you learn how the algo works.
Fun game though, I like the strategic element. Awesome soundtrack, too. I use this one for testing my headphones:

You have quite a lot of squads in the end, all fighting at once. You choose their formation and makeup.

Suikoden is pretty cool, too:

It's a bit RPS and only some of the battles, but it's different to most.

And this one, wow, this one. I played the **** out of this, Kessen 2 from the PS2 Era:

Lots of different story choices, both for conversations and battle strategy. Tactical map, battles on bridges, cities (attacking / defending) and even ships.
Both army commanding (both pre and in-battle) and magic / special abilities and duels.
You even get to play from the "other" side too, once completed.

Really great game, if you can stand the typical Chinky Three Kingdoms prancing. Nice soundtrack, too.
Ahh having fond memories of this one, now. SO much replayability too. Why don't they make them like this, anymore?
Last edited by Magick on January 20th, 2025, 22:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:58
Valter wrote: ↑ January 17th, 2025, 19:56
I remember the Skyrim Civil War quest having some larger scale skirmishes to take control of the forts.
last time I played skyrim I actually got far enough to do the civil war part and it was one small battle of like 8v8 then the entire quest ended and I was confused as ****
I think design might be an issue that inhibits Skyrim from having large city assault battles. Characters have collision, and each city can only be entered through relatively narrow gates. Breaches can't be widened, you can't push ramps or ladders to a wall and climb over it like in Mount & Blade, etc. So once you get past a dozen combatants, there could be traffic jams, not as in defenders lining up to bodyblock and hold a choke point but just one team all trying to get through one gate.

With the Open Civil War mod, IIRC there were so many fireballs flying around even in small skirmishes that you can go from full health to ragdolling in a second. Perhaps appropriate given the realism Skyrim goes for, but not very fun. There would need to be more ways to intercept/block incoming fireballs or to move cover around like those big shields/wooden palisades you stick into the ground (though I guess realistically those would explode into splinters which would tear people's eyes...).