Idea Info Name: Dao: The Way to Revolution Index: Primary Category: RPG Submitted: 12/7/2003 8:21:16 PM Written By: Truth and Untruth

Like all RPGs, the game is a battle and growth system centered around a story.  The story is of a young, twenty-one year old man, Hitayama Igura, who not four years ago, after his father's death, became grand master of  Kenpo Hitayama style.  Igura is a prodegy swordsman who uses the Taiban Ozaruh (the right hand of God) to slay his enemies.  Since the game starts with Igura having the strongest weapon in the world and being grand master of the most powerful martial art in the world, you might think that Igura's life is in pretty good shape; sadly, this is not the case.  Igura is a depressed and loveless man whom many people are trying to kill.  He doesn't have a lot of money and he has hardly any prestige outside of his hometown Hokkaido.  He's still sad over the tragic and untimely loss of his father.  Worst of all, Igura has inherited a lot of enemies with his position at the head of Kenpo Hitayama and people are constantly trying to kill him, especially the Ispyudo monks, sworn enemies of the Autin monks and the Order of the Red Dragon (those that hold the secrets to Kenpo Hitayama).  Being an Autin and a member of the Order, Igura spends a lot of time standing up for his Style.
The game is not based on Igura trying to save the world (as most RPGs are) but rather on his tyring to get through life in one piece.  He doesn't have a single enemy or group of friends, but is supported and antagonized by many people who might also be friends or enemies of each other.  Igura's main enemy is the Ispyudo monks, all of whom are constantly trying to destroy him.  His main allies are the Autin, especially the Order of the Red Dragon.

Story: The game begins with Igura seeking the infamous assassin Itohaiba Jene.  There's a 20,000 Noble bounty on Jene's head and Igura is after it.  Shortly after beginning his search for Jene, he finds that the assassin is actually an Ispyudo, so Igura's defeating Jene becomes a question of honor.  Igura tracks Jene to the Radiance Temple, where Jene is apparently trying to steal powerful magic that is sealed in the temple.  Igura stops Jene and finally kills him.  Unfortunately, Igura can't collect the bounty because he did not capture Jene and there was no proof that Jene was the assassin or that Igura killed him.  That's life.
The game continues in the same way: you control Igura on many unrelated tasks that involve helping friends and defeating enemies.  Many tasks are optional, but some are obligatory.  These tasks come up as time passes in the game and as Igura accomplishes them, they branch out into even more tasks.  Just so that you get a feel for the outlook of the tasks, I will list several here:

Igura the Bodyguard:  Igura is invited a garden party hosted by a famous politician along with many other great swordsman from Hokkaido.  The reason?  The politician wants to hire a bodyguard to protect a young princess from a dangerous assassin that has threatened to kill her.  Igura proves he's got the mettle to handle this task.  Accept it to pit yourself against the mighty and emotionless assassin, as well as the treacherous bodyguard who was hired with you.
Cherry Blossoms: Igura comes across an old, childhood friend: Moi Lei.  Lei is visiting Hokkaido for the upcoming Cherry Blossom Festival.  While the festivities go on, Lei meets (and falls in love with) a beautiful woman who does not immediately requite.  Unfortunately for this woman, the deadly assassin (mentioned above) is after her.  On the night before Cherry Blossom Day, the assassin chases the woman and attempts to kill her.  The valient Moi Lei chases after him, and the faithful Igura follows Lei.  In the end the woman is saved, Lei takes her home and everyone is happy.
Date with Death: The assassin is greatly impressed by Igura's skill with a blade and challenges him to a sparring match.  Igura meets with the assassin and they decide the time and place.  When they meet to duel, they are attacked by hordes of shadows.  The emotionless, fearless assassin continues to attack Igura even in the face of danger.  Igura fights off the shadows and the assassin and manages to flee.
Igura and the Man: Igura is falsely accused of murder and the police chase after him incessantly.  Igura manages to escape capture several times, but he finally has a brush with the chief of police who reveals himself as an Ispyudo.  Igura and the chief duel to the death, and Igura wins but since Igura was already accused, his story of the duel won't hold up in court (dueling is legal in Hokkaido).  What now, Igura?
Princly Matters: Igura is called to the capital and invited into Prince Yano Yanu's palace.  Igura discovers that the Prince has brushed aside Igura's false crime (see above) because he is interested in using Igura's abilities.  Yanu says that Igura has proved himself by defeating many strong sword fighters in Hokkaido such as Itohaiba Jene.  Yanu spars Igura and the latter wins.  Yanu decides to hire Igura as a bodyguard, but Igura does not want to leave Hokkaido.  The prince agrees to let Igura be his bodyguard for only part of the year so that he can spend a lot of  his time in his home city.  The prince also plans to visit Hokkaido.
The Lecherous Warrior: A member of the Order of the Red Dragon, Oyo Shinutai, happens to be having an affair with a powerful politician's wife, Setzuma Tanori.  Igura gets caught in the middle when Shinutai asks him to help arrange meetings between Shinutai and Tanori.  When the two are caught, the politician hires an assassin to kill Shinutai and Igura.  The two manage to survive, but Shinutai can't bring himself to admit his love to Tanori so she, in desparation, decides to go with her husband to another country accross the sea.  Just as the boat is about to depart, Shinutai catches up with Tanori and tells her he loves her.  Tanori leaves her husband to be with Shinutai, but the story's not over.  The politician blows all the money he has to hire the most powerful assassin he can find to kill Shinutai and Tanori.
The Five Clan Alliance: Five clans including the Ispyudo form an alliance against the Order of the Red Dragon.  Because Kenpo Hitayama is the most powerful martial art in the world, the Order has managed to survive for a very long time.  The leaders of the alliance decide to challenge and attack five of the strongest members of the Order: Hitayama Igura, Oyo Shinutai, Somutsu Kana, Eneri Ihomi, and Fautsu Katya.  The Ispyudo warrior, Omeda Sakai kills Ihomi, and Kana is also killed.  Igura manages to defeat the swordsman that challenged him: the leader of the alliance, Anuharu Tautsu.  Igura hopes that this will resolve the conflict, especially since two of his friends have been killed, but it does not.  Sakai comes after Igura and attacks him in his apartment.  Igura kills Sakai and the alliance disbands because they have lost their strongest swordsmen.
The Dragon's Nest: Igura decides to challenge one of these demigods in order to prove his worth as a swordsman.  He goes up against the weakest accessable Dragon he can find.  After traveling to a giant waterfall at the edge of the world, Igura finds the Dragon, Tso.  Much to his own amazement, Igura slays Tso.  Igura is one step closer to establishing  himself as a demigod.

The Battle System: The game's battle system is in some ways like a traditional RPG, but, in many ways, it is not.  Aside of the story battles, battles occur randomly while you wander around dangerous areas.  Even though you may control more than one character at a time during battle, the system relies more on independent fighting than teamwork.  Battles are split up into rounds with each ally and enemy performing a certain number of moves every round.  After everyone has performed all of their actions, the round ends unless you want to continue it (endurance, parry, etc. don't recover; see below) to finish off dieing enemies; however, this does not always work.
Each character has a set of tiles.  Tiles represent actions your character can take in battle.  There are several types of tiles.  The most common are Offense and O/D.  Offense tiles simply attack the enemy with whatever type of attack they are.  O/D attack the enemy, but they also put your character in defense mode.  O/D tiles cannot be combined, but combining tiles is very important to your success.  For every round of battle, your character gets to select from three tiles that appear on the screen.  You can select one of the three by pressing the appropriate button (possibly left, down and right).  On the tile will be three symbols: the tile type, the attack type, and the combine type.  The tile type is Offense, O/D, Dragon, etc.  The attack type is Horiz, Vert, Dragon, etc.  Each selected tile represents a low level attack.  You can combine them to form higher level attacks.  A tile may be combined with another tile if their combine types match and the character's turn is uninterrupted (by the enemy's turn).  Thus, it is fairly easy to combine if the enemy has used up all his actions.  Here's an example of tile combining:  Igura gets three tiles- O/Horiz/Red, O/Vert/Blue, O/D/Vert/Green.  He picks the first tile and uses Iai Slash for 1 damage.  It is his turn again and he gets O/Horiz/Blue, O/Vert/Red, O/Vert/Green.  He picks the second tile and uses Twin Slash (1 dmg +1 dmg to Vert Armor).  It is his turn once more and he gets O/Horiz/Red, O/D/Horiz/Red, Dragon/Red Dragon/Red.  He picks the third tile.  This time he uses Roundhouse Ripper for 4 damage (dragon tiles are double damage tiles, so it would've done 8).  Had he picked the first tile, he would've used Coupled Slash for 2 damage.  Had he picked the second, the combo chain would've been broken.  It is important to learn how to combo so that you can damage tougher enemies.  When the tiles appear on the screen, you have a short time to select the next tile.  If you delay too long, the enemy's turn comes.  If the enemy has no more turns, the least compatible tile is selected automatically.  During your offense, the enemy may try to parry.  The word "Parry" will appear on the enemy, but if you react quickly enough and press the appropriate button, their parry is cancelled.  When an enemy tries to attack you, watch and try to press the appropriate button so that your character can parry.  If the enemy's relfex is too high, you cannot cancel their parries.  It may be a good idea to study a character's tile set and their techniques before battle so that you will know what to combine to.  Each tile has a value that determines its probability of appearing during battle.  Obviously, strong tiles (like Dragon tiles) appear rarely.

Before you can fully understand the flow of battle, you have to understand the characters' stats:
Act: the number of times your character can move every round.
Carry over Act: the number of actions your character can carry over to the next round by not acting on the previous round.  If your Act is 4 and ur (CoA) is 2, your character can carry over two actions to the next round and make it a grand total of 6.  If your character chooses not to act, they will be in defense mode (possibly by pressing up instead of down, left or right).  If they do not act for 2 or more times, the next round, they may act 6 times.  Carry over carries over; that is to say, if your character acts 2 times the first round, the next round they may act 6; if they act 5 times that round, the next round they may act 5 (one turn is carried over).
Life Force: your basic survival stat that is kin to HP in other games.  While fighting, you want to avoid taking damage to your life force at all.  It does not recover during battle, and if it falls to zero, well..you know.  Life Force recovers fully after battle unless your character was injured during battle in which case their max LF will fall (depending upon the type of injury) until they rest at a clinic.
Endurance: endurance is the only thing (well, not really) standing between your character and LF damage.  Endurance decreases when a character takes a hit and recovers fully after every round of battle unless there is some abnormal status preventing this.  Thus in order to damage an enemy's LF, you have to deplete all of their endurance in a single round.
Armor: like endurance except that it is more specialized.  A character has several types of armors for different types of attacks.  The most common armor (and attack) types are Vertical and Horizontal.  Armor will protect you from Endurance and LF damage and recovers fully after every round (unless it has been disabled or something).  Armor is only active if your character is in defense mode, so keep that in mind.
Attack: what causes damage is your attack.  You have several different specialized attacks (such as Horizontal and Vertical).  Obviously, you want to try to use attack types that your character has a higher Attack stat for.  For instance, if a character's horiz. attack is 1 and their vert. attack is 2, you'll want to try to use vert. attacks most of the time.  However, it is important to keep the enemy's armor in mind.
Parry: your "evade."  This stat is not your chance to parry but rather the number of times you can parry every round.  A single parry withstands an attack power of any magnitude unless the enemy has some skill that knocks off multiple parries.  Your parries regenerate at the end of every round.  Unlike Endurance, parry does not work all the time.
Reflex: Reflex is your chance to parry.  A high reflex means you will parry more often.  Reflex also affects the growth rate of your Chi Voltage.
Chi and Chi Voltage: considerably important stats.  Chi is, in essence, your energy.  You need it for many things.  First off, Chi affects your damage power.  For every 10 points of Chi you have above your enemy, you cause 1 extra damage with every attack (same if enemy has Chi above yours).  Chi also affects what martial art you can use.  Some martial arts require a high minimum Chi before their techniques become available.  You have to expend a certain amount of Chi to use some special techniques.  Chi is also very important for growth (covered later).  Your Chi Voltage affects how quickly your Chi grows during battle.  It is the maximum amount of Chi your base Chi can grow by for every round of battle.  Your Chi grows when you take actions (such as attacking).  The amount it grows is based on your ChiV.  Your ChiV grows during battle also.  How quickly it grows depends upon your Reflex and your Ki.  ChiV and Chi both return to their base levels after battle.
Ki: this is more like your magic power.  Its base size affects the growth rate of your ChiV.  You need to expend Ki to use Magic Blade.  Your Ki recovers fully after battle.
Talents: characters also have several "talent" stats.  These affect random occurences in battle (like real life talents, no matter how refined they are they will not always work).  Talents include dexterity (override parry), knowledge (ignore specialized defense), power (critical hit), charisma (raise chances to continue round), and grace (raise damage of arts).  Different characters have different talents and how refined they are is based on their number (a character with a dexterity of 2 is better at dexterity than one with a dexterity of 1.5).

The flow of battle: The best way to teach is through example, so to speak, so I will use (as an example) the game's exhibition fight: Igura vs. Jene.  These are their stats:
Igura: Act-4 (2); Life Force-3; Endurance-3; H Armor-1; V Armor-1; H Attack-1; V Attack-1; Spec Attack-1; Dragon Attack-1; Red Dragon Attack-2; Parry-3; Reflex-1.3; Chi-12; ChiV-.8; Ki-3; (talents don't really matter for this battle).  Taiban Ozaruh (Igura's weapon)-Ignore special defense.
Jene: Jene has the same stats as Igura except his Endurance is 2, his Reflex is 7, he has no Dragon or Red Dragon attack and his ChiV is .4.
For being the first fight of the game, this is not an easy bout; there are two ways to go about fighting this battle: the easy way and the hard way.  If you fight the easy way, you can conquer Jene is 6 rounds.  Otherwise, this battle is going to take a long time.  Because of Jene's massive Reflex,  his parry always works, so the only way to damage him is to cause more than 6 damage in a single round (3 parry + 2 endurance + 1 armor=6).  You also have to keep in mind that you cannot use both horiz and vert attacks while Jene is in defense mode or his total defense rises to 7.  Igura has only 4 actions per round, so the only way you can cause the 6 damage is to carry over at least two actions every other round.  Igura can attack 6 times so you will need to combine at least two of his attacks so that he does 2 damage in a single action.  If you do this 3 times (in 6 rounds) Jene will be defeated!  Just remember not to use too much variation on Horiz/Vert attacks because if Jene is on defense when you hit him with both, you won't damage him.  Also, if Igura gets a Red Dragon tile, you don't even need to combine.
The hard way is for those who are not creative enough to combine.  Because Igura's ChiV is higher than Jene's, Igura's Chi will eventually exceed Jene's by 10.  Then it's just a matter of attacking Jene because Igura can easily do 8 damage, exceeding Jene's 7 defense maximum.  There is still the matter of Igura's survival.  Jene always attacks 4 times per round, so make sure to defend or use an O/D tile at least once every round so that Igura does not take LF damage.  If you get unlucky, Jene will combine and do two damage in a single attack (rare) so if that happens, hope Igura can parry it.  In the easy way, you hardly need to worry about Igura's life because he uses 4 actions to defend every odd round and you have six chances to get one O/D tile every even round.

The Growth System: After battle, you earn three kinds of experience: Strength, Wisdom, and Honor.  You earn strength depending upon how high your Chi rose during battle, and how strong the enemy was.  You get bonus strength points if you use strong combos during battle.  You earn Wisdom if you fight new enemies or use special techniques/magic to defeat them.  Your Wisdom will also rise if you are hit by these two.  Honor is the hardest of the three to earn.  You get it by defeating enemies to your name (duels against other great swordsman yield Honor) and/or finishing battles with your Chi as low as possible.  Thus Honor depends on using your best techniques as fast as you can.  Your character's growth depends on abilities.  Each ability requires a certain amount of S/W/H before it is earned.  There is a limit to the number of abilities your character can hold in each category, so you will often have to decide what is more important.  The different categories of abilities are: Weapon, Life/Protection, Combat, Talent, and Martial Art.  The number of abilities that can be held in each can also grow if your character earns enough S/W/H.  Some abilites (such as your base stats) are locked in and can't be replaced except by a higher level of the same ability (for instance, Igura's Life lv1, which gives him 3 Life Force can only be replaced by Life lv2, which gives him 6 Life Force).  Once you have earned enough S/W/H for a particular ability, you can select and place it on your abilities list or use it to replace an exisiting ability (that is not locked in).

The Martial Arts System: the final element of the game determines what kind of attacks you use in battle.  Each character learns several martial arts.  Each martial art has several sets of techniques that branch from their basic techniques.  In order to use a martial art (your basic martial art excepted) your character has to have accumulated a certain amount of Chi.  Igura's basic martial art is Daojishin.  Obviously, Igura's best martial art (and only alternative to Daojishin, actually) is Kenpo Hitayama.  However, in order to use Kenpo Hitayama lv1, Igura has to have at least 60 Chi.  Thus, Igura must fight using Daojishin for a long time (or raise his base Chi a lot) before he can use Kenpo Hitayama.  Eventually, Igura will get the Kenpo Hitayama lv2 ability to replace lv1.  This requires even more Chi to use.  During battle, if your character accumulates enough Chi, a message "Switch Martial Art" will appear and you can select to use another martial art, even in mid-round.  Some martial arts are better than others in certain situations.  You have to analyze the techniques of each martial art and implement them appropriately to be successful in battle.

That is my game idea.  I hope someone has the diligence to play it.