Randomizers

[Dragon Lord]

So, as some of you might already know, in the last couple of years we've seen a huge increase in the popularity of romhack randomizers for games. What are your thoughts on them? Have you ever tried one?

I've spent the last week or two watching a lot of Final Fantasy IV: Free Enterprise League, which is a speedrunning tournament of a Final Fantasy IV randomizer that completely changes everything about the game. You start with access to your airship and every where in the game is unlocked from the start. You start with two random characters, and the rest are spread out among the various places that you get them, but of course they are all randomized. Key items are completely randomized, bosses are completely randomized, treasure chests are randomized and shops are randomized. 

I've had a blast watching these races, and I'm definitely going to try out this one myself. Overall it looks like the best randomizer I've seen yet. It's been awesome seeing what kind of crap goes down in these seeds. Seeing an early game boss like the Mist Dragon show up in the spot of a late-game boss and hit for 4,000+ damage is awesome. The bosses are in random spots, but the stats for those boss spots are unchanged. So you could end up getting a boss like Golbez in a high magic stat spot in the final dungeon, and see him hit for 8,000+ damage with his spells. Or you could get a late-game boss like Wyvern show up in an early game spot and Mega Flare your team for 8,000+ damage immediately. There's so much that can happen with the bosses in this randomizer that just make it so good.

So the goal of the randomizer is to find the items you need to beat the game. To those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy IV, you need a key item in order to fight the final boss. You need to use it on him to reveal his true form, and then the fight actually begins. So the first step in this randomizer is to obviously find that item, but of course it could be any where. Second, you need one of two key items that allow you to get to where the boss is. In this randomizer, they changed the Pass item to allow you to warp directly to the final boss, so you either need that or you need the vanilla item that gives you access to the final dungeon. Then of course you need the team and the right levels in order to beat the final boss, so even if you find the two items you need to get to and beat the final boss, you might not have the characters. I've seen seeds that give you the item to fight the final boss in the first five minutes. To me that's good and bad. Yes, you want the item, but at the same time, getting it that early makes it difficult to think about what to do about your team. Where do you go to get your party members? Which party members do you take? Do you just find the first three you can and then go? Or do you spend more time looking for the good characters like Edge, Rosa, Kain and Palom/Fu-So-Ya?

It's just awesome watching these runners, and to see some of the shit they do to be able to get where they need to be. In the league, you earn 4 points for a first place finish, 3 for second, 2 for third and 1 for fourth. Once this round of the tournament is done, I believe they'll go from 32 runners down to the top 12. So if anyone is interested in watching one of the races, hit up RPG Limit Break on either Twitch (if you want to see a live race) or YouTube, where you can go and watch any of the previous races.

Oh, and I almost forgot one of the best parts of this randomizer... the people who made it did some special work on it, and they also randomized the song that Edward plays during the Twin Harp scene, and best of all, they randomized the sprite for the final boss once you reveal his true form. I've seen some pretty hilarious things, like the Moon from Majora's Mask, Thomas the Train, the Final Fantasy IV logo, and many others. So yeah, if you want a good time, definitely catch some of these races or watch the previous ones on YouTube.

[lp0 on fire]

I thought this topic was going to be on how RNG in AAA games is so popular now (i.e. lootboxes).

In this case given I say Praise RNGesus! Something I my self would not do, but it can produce amusing results.

[Moonface]

That sounds awesome and I'd love that to become a feature in more games, even those that wouldn't normally be a candidate due to not being RPG's or similar in nature. It reminds me of a character in Binding of Isaac who starts off with random items every time so you can never go into a run with a starting plan by using a predictable character.

[Dragon Lord]

I'm actually not sure how well a randomizer would work for anything other than an RPG, or something like The Legend of Zelda where all of the items can be switched around. The A Link to the Past Randomizer is another really popular one, and really got the ball rolling on this randomizer craze the last couple of years.

Though I still think RPGs are the best for them, especially older ones. The Final Fantasy IV randomizer is amazing, but I don't think a Final Fantasy XII or Final Fantasy XII Randomizer would be nearly as good (if it was even possible for those games, but just using them as examples). Unfortunately Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI wouldn't work for a randomizer either, due to story reasons that would make it really difficult. See spoiler at the end of my post for further details.

I'd love to see some randomizers of other SNES RPGs. A Final Fantasy Mystic Quest randomizer could be really interesting. Super Mario RPG could probably work. Maybe Chrono Trigger. Though I don't know if any of them would be as good as FFIV, it's just a case of the game being perfect for it. FFIV and randomizer was meant to be, because they were able to make it open world so you could go any where you wanted right from the start of the game (minus places that require a key item to access, of course).

Spoiler

The reason I say FFV and FFVI couldn't work is due to the game being split into several different worlds. In FFV, you have three worlds, and in FFVI you have two. They could probably make a randomizer that makes the bosses and items random, but unfortunately they wouldn't be able to make it "open world" like the FFIV randomizer due to the different worlds. Unless someone could program in a way to jump between the worlds freely. Otherwise the best we could get is playing the game normally, but with random bosses and loot.

[Mr EliteL]

I was wondering if I had see anything with a randomiser before, and remembered watching some guy doing a playthrough of Fire Emblem 7. So yeah, found items, character class, starting characters and recruitable characters (only playable ones of course) were random. Bosses might've been, but don't remember. Was like a year or so ago I watched about half of the playthrough. Also with that I can't explain what happened unless I watch again, but was funny and intriguing to see even having not played FE7 before.

[Dragon Lord]

Ah, I forgot about FE randomizers. Those ones can be fun as well, especially considering how much in can screw you over with bad characters. I believe FE randomizers do have random bosses/enemies per map, so you can get some really strong enemies early-game.

Unfortunately you don't see a whole lot with FE randomizers any more, which is kind of sad. It's all about the A Link to the Past randomizer and now the FFIV randomizer.

[ShiraNoMai]

I've definitely seen more randomizers around lately, between Dark Souls (Item/Boss/Enemy), Sekiro, now Pokemon (especially with the "Ironmon" challenge), randomizers definitely seem to freshen up the traditional play of a game you already love and know inside and out.

The LTTP randos are also really cool. I think my favorite part about randos are just anticipating a good "check" and coming out with nothing significant, which leads to more thinking and such to get the run to work out.

[Moonface]

I wish BotW could have a randomizer, but the only thing that could be randomized with that really is the enemy spawns. The lack of linear structure or even key items makes it impossible to randomize the actual approach to the game like most Zelda randomizers do.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah the very nature of BOTW is already pretty randomized in itself. Progression is on the player's discretion and not necessarily from a linear sort of progression system like past games. I think that's what makes BOTW so fascinating each time you play because you get that sense of randomization with each subsequent playthrough.

[ShiraNoMai]

Piggybacking off of the concept behind why people speedrun games, finding new challenges in games you know and love can be super fun. In the case of randomizers, where depending on what's being shuffled around, can make the game you know and love very different yet familiar!

Some randomizers shuffle around mechanics (in Pokémon randomizers, shuffling Base Stats and Natures), some randomize aesthetics (palette swapping/sound shuffling), others randomize key things like items, progression tools, and even whole level locations!

What game would you like to see randomized, if it hasn't already?

Have you tried out any yourself? Share your tales here!

NOTE: This post was part of a duplicate thread that was merged into this one, which is why it may not make sense in its location in this thread.

[Moonface]

@ShiraNoMai: I didn't think of this last night when you mentioned making the thread to me, but turns out there was already a thread made for Randomizers so I merged your thread into this one.