interesting characterization and storylines, which sounds really broad but vv i'm primarily someone who (over)analyzes character motivations, psyche, and actions

that said i prefer open-world type games

if a game sticks to the hero's journey pretty closely i probably will like it because i'm a sucker for that

Would you be willing to pick me a character and tell me about what drew you to them?

I've got some thinks percolating which might maybe go somewhere

sure, you could take a stab at it! the people i usually play are from FFXII and FFIV

So, what's one you've played/are playing, and what attracted you to them in particular?

i used to play larsa solidor, that was my most recent foray into playing from XII! he was really interesting because he very politically savvy but just a young child, fitting into my character type of

"kid who's precocious as fuck"

he's also very earnest and wants the best for the world and the people that reside within it, and i can identify with that.

you only touch base with him twice and he is characterized often by indirect characterization (people talking about him)

rather than experiencing who he is up front, which i found really intriguing.

i played jade Curtiss from tales of the abyss and that's it

and he's a special asshole

Tell me about this special asshole!

i actually dislike most jrpg plots when i was growing up, i only cared abt characters but now it's pulling teeth for me to touch jrpgs or most japanese games in general since i find them tropey and boring

jade was very different from the vag jrpg cvharacter in that he was the older (40s) megane character general mage but also a grade A sarcastic, punny, mean-spirited dickhead

he was a built-in troll

*avg

he wasn't one of the bad guys exactly, he wasn't a mentor figure exactly, he was just there and laughing at the suffering of the party

I'm assuming they pulled together with the rest of that game's Team Protagonist enough to face the Big Bad as a unified front, though?

Jade's a weird case insofar that alongside all that, he's...a piece of work. Done some screwed-up shit prior to the events of the game. He's not the archetypal Tales Series Traitor character either.

He's very much on the side of Team Protagonist, period. But he's still a sarcastic, punny, mean-spirited, trollish mage-general.