I played a lot of games over the years and out of the many kinds of games I played, RPGs were included. I used to love these games and could play them for hours on end. However, as I got older and less OCD about gaming, I started to get really bored of many RPGs out there and for the most part, I don’t touch them that much these days. However, I haven’t completely given up on RPGs, but it will take a lot for me to get into one nowadays. I’m not here to say “RPGs suck and should go die in a fire!”, but instead, “how I think RPGs could be improved because I want to like more of them”. There’s much I could talk about when it comes to these games and how I think they could be better, although I’m hardly the only one. Assuming I don’t get too lazy (which is likely), I could talk about tons of subjects like level grinding, drop rates, missable items, linear progress, ultimate weapons, element based weaknesses, and more. I think I’ll just start off from the beginning, as in the beginning of the games. I don’t think this has been talked about as much as many other aspects of RPGs.

RPGs can have a bunch of weapons, spells, various party members, and more. However, at the start of the game, you may be stuck with one or two party members and limited to just attack and using potions every now and then. Often, I tend to dread the beginning of a RPG the most, at least if I play it for the second time, because there tends to be little strategy that’s made up of mashing attack and using a healing item every now and then. Sure it usually gets more complex later, but at the start, not so much. Now, since I’m not here to hate on RPGs, I won’t single them out for this. Oldskool style shooting games where you progressively get better weapons tend to have a bunch of fancy weapons (with limited ammo), but you’ll only start off with a pea shooter which I often find boring to use. Racing games will advertise a bunch of fancy cars that can go over 200 MPH, but at the start of the game, you’ll end up driving an used car that looked like it survived a couple of whacks and can barely go faster than an interstate’s speed limit.

Anyway, I’m the kind of person that likes depth and strategy to ultimately be the deciding factor in battles, not just sheer overpowering through higher numbers. I’ll get to that sooner or later, proven I don’t get too lazy. I find it very dull when your entire strategy is just to mash attack over and over and win simply because you’re stronger than what you face. I think a perfect example of this are the Pokémon games. They have hundreds of Pokémon and hundreds of moves that can lead to really in-depth strategy that’s more than just winning by sheer power alone (at least in the metagame), but this depth doesn’t come till later. At the beginning, you have a level 5 Pokémon that can only use Tackle (or something very similar) and a basic attack or defensive raising or lowering move. Along the first couple of routes or so, you tend to fight Normal types and Flying types, at which point, are also stuck using Tackle and tend to be level 2 or 3. Basically, the beginning of the game boils down to just a Tackle-fest and you only coming out on top because your Pokémon is higher level.

Another game I feel that suffers greatly from this is Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. So the series is considered an Action RPG, but a RPG nonetheless. In this game, actions like attacking and casting spells is done through the use of cards. These cards can also be used two or three at a time to combine into more powerful moves (called sleights) then just using these cards by themselves. There are many of these sleights and the game is designed in such a way that you should use these more than the cards by themselves, especially later on. By the end of the game, you can have quite a bit of cards and quite a bit of sleights to mix and match. However, at the start of the game, you have very little options. It basically comes down to just mashing attack and spamming attack cards before you get access to more depth and strategy, even if that strategy is spamming the same sleights over and over. So when I decided to play the game again on Proud (hard) mode, I was thinking that “oh boy, I’m gonna make these unique decks and sleights so I can do more than spam attack for most of the game”, yet it turns out such options were almost non-existence at the beginning of the game.

I feel that you should have access to a lot more depth and strategy right from the start of the game instead of later on. I don’t like having to play about half way or so through the game before I can feel like I have a variety in how I can battle. Just because the story progressive may be linear doesn’t mean the battle system has to be too before they decide you can do more than attack. At best, you may be able to cast a basic elemental spell as well aside attack and using a potion. When I talk about variety, I’m also talking more than just “should I use Fire I or Fire II that only has a power and MP cost difference?”, but that’s another in-depth subject for down the road. When I say more options, I mean starting off with more weapons, spells, and techniques to play off weaknesses and more status effect options.

Of course, there has to be a reason why the developers decided that you hardly have access to most of the techniques at the start of the game. I have a couple of theories on that. My first theory is that they may do this to ease you into the game and not overwhelm you too much, so you may hardly be required to think much at all besides the attack or potion options. From here, they can slowly add more options before suddenly, you have many ways you can win. This can be a way of keeping the difficulty down by not having to worry as much about what you can do. My other theory is that they want to hook you into the game by giving you access to new stuff as you progress. A game tends to be more interesting if there’s new stuff to discover over the span of the game isn’t it? The developers figure that aside from story and setting changes, you’ll want to keep going to see what new weapon or spell you may discover next that can change how you play, even if slightly. So in a way, it’s like “I know I barely have any options right now, but later, I’ll be able to do all kinds of cool stuff”. I feel that this is a long standing trope that I would like a game to break from the norm and give you far more options from the beginning, so even if you replay the game over and over, you’ll be able to play it differently by using different strategies.

So how do you feel about this? Do you think the start of a RPG is fine the way it is when you start with very limited combat options or should you start off with more? Know any RPGs out there which give you a greater variety and actual strategy right from the get go?