So you're walking along, minding your own business, looking for that cave with that treasure chest that has that key that goes to the door that from the looks of it leads to some kick ass room full of kick ass items,
where the kick ass princess is being imprisoned when all of the sudden...Random Encounter!
Next thing you know there are three giants and a dragon that from the way they just handled what you thought was your bad ass knight are gonna completely total your wondering band of Tolkien rejects. Quick! If my mage can just cast Escape...maybe if flare misses, maybe if the sky rains goats, maybe that's thE LAST TIME I GO IN THIS DAMN CAVE.
Two decades later I miss that cave.
I miss the excitement of RPG townsfolk with such bad translations you can't figure out whether you're looking for a forest or trying to find a hidden mountain pass. Whatever happen to the good old days when side quests were full of fiendishly strong monsters but necessary if you were going to beat the game's even more powerful final boss.
Before you cry to me about level grinding and repetitive fighting patterns, really take a step back and think about the adrenaline rush when every fight could be your last, when dungeon crawling required real preparation, wizards truly were your ace in the hole, and the infamous game over screen was one random encounter away.
Truly this dynamic has become a long forgotten myth as companies turn out one mind numbing pat on the back after another.
When has anyone cried as much they did when facing Exdeath?
As I sat on my couch today, marching through Star Ocean, Second Story (the 3rd time?), I found myself engrossed as I fought battle after battle, leveling, gaining abilities, and scraping through near death situations. And then, half an hour later I found myself nodding off as my characters destroyed the enemies and uttered inaudible battle cries with no help from me.
Yes, it was my third time through, and things were different the first, but this scenario has become all too common now a days.
There are a range of problems plaguing the current market of RPGs, the least of which are their trite and over prioritized stories, cookie cutter game play, and annoying characters (made worse by their over acted voice overs). However, put aside all these things and you still have a game that I could teach my dog how to play. Rogue Galaxy, Star Ocean 3, FFXII, Kingdom Hearts, The Last Remnant, Suikoden/Wild Arms/Dragon Quest insert number here___? They may (some of them), have many offsetting pros, but their level of challenge has become so watered down that if you removed all of the dramatic dialogue and extravagant FMVs my house plant could finish the game in time to chuck it out the window before Square Enix unloaded their next piece of trash at the local EB.
Hopefully, some day in the future, side quests won't be tedious and inconsequential. Boss fights will demand you think on your toes, dungeon crawling will require you find that spell buried in Bahamut's lair, and Final battles won't be just that thing you do to watch the credits so you can say you officially beat the game even though your characters out leveled 2:1 the supposedly all powerful, half god, half intergalactic cosmological anti hero freak show final boss weeks ago.
Until then I'm loading my file back up and heading back to that son of a bitch cave.
E.C.Gach's blog
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I see what you did there. Either that or I'm a total fucking pervert.
Xenogears
Chrono Trigger
FF1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8
Chrono Cross
Pretty much anything available on PS1.
When I was a kid I could play one the games the angry videogame nerd takes a shit on from start to finish - even if it took me three months. I think it's because of the evolution of gaming and technology - if the game is too hard or too boring we know that there are a hundred other games we could be playing.
I even have a problem starting up rpg games at all anymore and if the game has hard-ass dungeons with dragons and giands with dicks bigger than mu sword I will probably switch to world of goo.
Sorry about the long comment :)
Old-school RPGs made up for relatively simple systems with grinding, while newer ones prefer that you learn the ins and outs of the rules and exploit them to greatest effect. This is most clear of recent JRPGs when playing games like Final Fantasy XII and Persona 3.
In FFXII the gambit system wanted you to construct complex routines for your characters to use against regular field enemies, the better to prep them for hard boss battles that often required you to turn off the gambits. After all, once you know how to fight Wolves, you don't need to be forced to select the same options again, just set your gambits in the right order. Instead, it's the exceptional battles, boss battles, that force you to fly by the seat of your pants.
Persona 4 works in a similar way, but staggered over the whole experience of the game rather than just in individual combats, since so many outside factors affected your overall performance in battle, particularly your time and resource management (dungeon-run scheduling vs. conserving SP vs. persona fusing vs. party composition).
Personally I prefer "learn" to "slog", but there are many games which cater to your old-school tastes. Atlus is publishing many old-timey hardcore dungeon crawlers on the DS and PS2, and I'm in the process of reviewing an action RPG that might catch your masochistic fancy. Look for it in the future.
FFXII was not complicated and the reason it doesn't feel like grinding is you don't have to push the buttons anymore. But the interface of knights dealing out and soaking up damage and someone healing while the third character dicks around with black magic that is useless in the face of a strong weapon with haste/berserk. My problem is that that's all the battles require and they aren't even hard--haste berserk curaga: repeat until finished.
In the face of so few new strange and wonderfully different battle systems I just ask that Boss fights become challenging again.
@oberoi
I agree that as we get older, the patience we have with rpgs dwindles a lot. and i'm ok with that because it proves that as games evolve so do our expectations. But i disagree with the idea that we give up on games if they're too hard, if they're too easy, yea, fuck that game. i dont need to waste my time with something that has no challenge. but if a game makes me think or makes me keep pushing to win, then i get excited and want to keep playing.
i could keep rambling here, but i have my own blog that i think i'll post on instead.