2D or 3D for Action-RPG with "drawn" characters? [DONE]

I'm pretty new to all of this although I have basic programming skills, so that's not the issue. Something I can't find an answer to is the question which method we should use. We want to make an Action-RPG in realtime with the possiblity to go in all directions (I already implemented the move controls in the 2D mode) but I'm questioning now if I should stick with 2D or use 3D with a fixed camera angle (isometric) because of things like hit areas, characters having the possibility to go behind other characters and things and so on. We don't plan to use little enemies yet so that it's more of a boss game until now. Which mode is better for things like quick movement (evading to the sides like quicksteps, jumping back or jumping up), attacking (for example being hit up/back because of knockback) and combos as well as special skill attacks? The boss battles are planned to be quite quick (but not too fast to not confuse the player), so not like Diablo but rather like Metal Gear Rising in 2D with a different camera and sprite graphics.
If things seem unclear, feel free to ask.

 

If your characters appear to move in 3 dimensions, like such beat-em-ups as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles etc., then nowadays I would advise just building your scene in 3D.

(That's not how those games did it — they faked it all and kept track of Z position separate from the sprite position — but in Unity, I think it'd be easier to just move your sprites in 3D and use an orthographic camera.)

 

Is this also possible if everything is drawn? Not only characters but also areas, objects and so on.
Or rather - how do I make this work with areas? I got the controls and everything to work and the characters look like this could actually work. But what about the levels and stuff? I can't quite grasp my mind around how to do it and what I should tell our level artist to do when he designs stuff.

 

Well, you can just have the level itself be a background image behind (in Z) everything else. So your characters aren't actually walking on the street; they're walking on nothing, out in space in front of the street... but from the point of view of the camera, it looks like they're walking in the street.

An alternative is to draw the horizontal stuff (like the street) separately, and actually position it horizontally in the scene, with vertical stuff (like buildings or trees) positioned as separate sprites. This is bending the rules a bit, and could be more or less obvious depending on how you stretch the image texture. But the cool thing about Unity is that you can do it — you might even decide that a more obvious 3D environment is a cool style, even composed of hand-drawn images.

 

I chose a top down view, so that the rotation is set to x30 and nothing else. We thought that it could be nice to be able to use the surroundings to your advantage against the bosses, so that they become a factor, too. This would mean the second option, right?
Do you mean something like Paper Mario with the second option?

 

Yes, that sounds about right.

 

Thanks a bunch - you helped us out a lot!