Gather round, little bots. Tonight I have for you a little known tale about the wretched bucket of experiences people fondly refer to as childhood.
Visualize with me, if you will a girl of about 10: short for her age, long mousy brown hair, wearing a ridiculous sleeveless Tour de France shirt, uniform regulation gym shorts and lavender oversized glasses. She's sitting in front of the television playing Phantasy Star 2 for the first time, totally fascinated and absorbed by the characters she's just been introduced to. She's the loner type and doesn't have friends, so while other children enjoy the throes of popularity, puppy love and underage drug abuse, her after school days thereafter are spent exploring Paseo and forgetting the real world existed at all.
Yeah, that dorky little kid was me, and without emotionally rich games, I wouldn't have had the rich experiences that made me fall in love with games in the first place. This thoughtful article from Gamasutra got me thinking about the games that made the biggest impact on me and why.
1.
Phantasy Star 2: The opening credits still make me kinda tingly. This was the first game I've ever played that had the balls to kill off an important character. For those noobs who think
FFVII did it first, I'm sorry to disappoint you. It was also the first RPG I ever played that chose a futuristic setting instead of the traditional medieval setting. Yeah, it looks like ass next to RPGs of today, but as a kid, I thought about Nei's death for days afterwards.
2.
Chrono Trigger: This game is just gold from start to finish. At the time of it's release it was lauded as revolutionary; the multiple endings specifically drew a lot of attention. It never took the heavy route - instead it seemed to keep a brisk pace, always moving forward with lots of events and character interaction. It's weaving of the topic of time travel into the game was so fluid, you never even realized you were exploring major roads of philosophical thought, because you were simply too busy having fun.
3.
Final Fantasy VII: Well, you knew it would be on the list, so for those of you who hate it, bitch in the comments. There's no explaining why so many players cared so much about a spiky haired kid with a shitty attitude, but maybe it was the Han Solo formula. Whatever it was, this game is beloved in the annals of RPG gamers' memories for a reason. Fantastic characters, engaging plot, and a world so highly detailed it was hard to remember it wasn't a real place. If Sony does ever decide to stop taunting us and remake this baby for the next gen, there's going to be a joy stampede.
4.
Silent Hill 2: This game is so freaking perfect it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Masterfully suspenseful and frightning, it draws you into the story effortlessly with absolutely no idea of what you will face in the end. I actually cried at the conclusion. Being so emotionally engaged with a story that you elicit such a reaction is a surefire sign that the creators have done their job well. It's been recently mentioned that the SH team are drawing on this game's feel for the creation of
Silent Hill 5, which makes me a happy little muppet indeed.
5.
Final Fantasy X: A lot of people didn't like this one and are going to disagree with this choice. Luckily, this is my article and not yours, so feel free to suck it. Playing through the opening sequence between Tidus and Auron completely fascinated me and made me want to play it through to the end. Of all the FF characters in the series, these were the most real to me. The pilgrimage to Zanarkand really absorbed me as well, and the ending is both completely sad and heartbreakingly beautiful. If you care about being truly engaged in your games, this one is a must.
All joking aside, what are the games that engaged you the most as a player?
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Contest:
5:13 PM on 12.31.2006
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Great article, Nagiko.
That's a pretty good list. I think you could add Final Fatansy Tactics there too (maybe switch it with FF7, wich isn't that great really).
While we're on topic of reaching into our past, the name of some old animated movie always escapes me, I wonder if any of you guys know what it is. I remember some vague details like a big blimp called the "Dirigible" and beds sprouting legs and walking down streets.
Beyond good & evil IS a great game, but i don't think it really pushes all the emotion and character background buttons it could have. Guess you can't fit as much in 12 hours as in 40. + the ending was very dissapointing.
I guess Chrono trigger/FF6/FF7 are the triforce of rpg's. You have great characters that can't be ruined by bad voice acting and the low quality of the graphics made for less fanservice-oriented character design. And great, believable plots with epic, memorable scenes. I somehow never connected with FF4 as much as some have. I see the major influence it had on the FF6 plot, but emotion-wise it's about as empty as a nes game.
FF8 i think had most of what it took, but the plot got wierd with the "guess we forgot lol" basketball court scene, and the time crash thing was unnecessary. However, i think the Balamb garden attack scene is still one of the best in RPG gaming.
Chrono Cross is an example of the dev team making a couple wrong choices early in development without anyone pushing them back in the right track. Too many characters, overthought time travel plot.
Silent hill: each time i see Harry wake up at the cafe, i thing "it's starting again". Silent hill is fucking hell on repeat. I can stop listening, but Harry Mason is stuck there forever.
@Kaoru: My devious plot is working - I'm coverting lurkers into commenters. Welcome to Destructoid. :) Now keep commenting!!!
As far as engaging, Id put Fallout on my list, one of the more overlooked RPGs because it was on the PC, its mix of dark humor, a post nuclear war setting, and with a 1950's vision of the future.
I would also put the original Doom and Mario on my list, I bought an NES with my own money when I was 5 and the amount of time I spent playing mario and duck hunt was ridiculous.
Doom I remember playing the first time when I was 10, and I remember it scared the crap out of me, I couldn't go through the game without the security of God mode and a BFG.
*As far as engaging, Id put Fallout on my list, one of the more overlooked RPGs because it was on the PC, its mix of dark humor, a post nuclear war setting, and with a 1950's vision of the future really pulled me in and has had me replaying it several times.
IT'S A MUST HAVE FOR EVERYBODY!!!
Honerable mention to EarthBound.
That being said, having since sold all of my old systems (what was I thinking?) I did manage to keep the one game that keeps me going back (via emulator or some other means) -- Final Fantasy VI (III).
It had the makings of greatness -- gripping storyline, characters that anyone could relate with, flying airships (c'mon, everyone's wanted one at some point); it was episodic... you would always be pulled back the next day.
I grew up on that game. I'm 23 now, and I still go back and play that game every so often.
Other notables: FFIV, FFV, Chrono Trigger... Eh, there's more, but too many to mention
I don't know what kind of game ToeJam and Earl qualifies as, but as a kid that game absolutely sucked me into funkytown for copious hours at a time. And despite my less than popular status as a poofy hair kid in those days, I knew that I had at least leveled up from 'Doofus' and 'Pointdexter' in that world, so things were okay. Jammin'!
Respect it deserves? Dude, have you not seen the massive fan base of teenybopper 14 year old girls and guys? FF7 is definitely a good game, but it's way overrated due to the fact the fanbase is made up on kids who like looking at pretty pixels. Which is why a lot of people hate it as well. There's too many kids running around loving this game who have only played one or two other RPGs and really don't know anything about it. Much like the anime fan-girls/boys you see every now and then. Kids who only know about anime when it's on cartoon network, technically the same audience.
As a gamer who was weaned on the great RPG classics of the 8 and 16 bit era, and continues to play RPGs with great passion to this very day, I am able to say with great confidence that I know an awe-inspiring RPG when I play one, and at the time - and even to this day, Final Fantasy VII stands out as one of the greats.
Even if it is considered a mainstream RPG, which is what I suspect a lot of gamers dislike about it (perhaps to make them seem more "hardcore"?) I can still look back and say "hey, this game was damned good and it contributed sometihng important to the genre". And I can say that with confidence, knowing I'm right. Not only because of the throngs of people who agree with me, despite what seems to be a growing tend in recent years to stomp on this title, but also because I've paid my dues and have been playing RPGs since before a lot of people developed the motor skills to pick up a controller and play the game.
Game that absorb me Chrono fucking trigger this is simply the best of its kind fucking argument
Zelda Ocarina of time (do i even need to explain why on this one?)
FF6 screw you n00bs this is better than ff7
super mario bros 3 rpg or not i love this game
Zelda links awakening my favorite 2d zelda and yes i have played loz lttp
Super mario rpg this game fucking rocks
i really dont feel like going onm anymore so thats it
But, yeah Aloke. I had to stop playing FF9 because it was just getting too sad. Poor Dagger...
FFX was the worst FF game to have been made in a long time. Why? Because there was no mystery. The second any character is intorduced we are practically given their entire life story, and then we have to put up with them telling us about it every 5 minutes when another really poorly scripted cutscene is shown. Yes Tidus, I understand you're a fucking retard who wants everything his own way. Yes Yuna, we'll all stand by you as you make your worthless pilgrimage because we don't have a choice. Wakka, smoke more pot, Auron, I know you're a zombie already. The best games of RPG series had characters with ambiguous pasts; look at Zidane and Cloud, we know nothing about them even 70% of the way through the game. Well, the same could almost be said for Tidus, except we were given the idea that we knew his past when we didn't; with Zidane and Cloud, we were basically left in the dark and they constantly had to question their own importance and existance. Tidus? "HEY LETS GO PILGRIMAGE BLITZBALL WOO GIMME A FERRARI." The only way to play FFX is to do something else at the same time, so you don't have to sit through the hours of horribly scripted and voiced cutscenes. I was more emotionally involved in watching a dog vomit than I was in FFX. FFIX on the other hand, fucking brilliant. At least there were multiple storylines other than a group of dipshits willingly following a path to their own destruction.
Goddamn I hate FFX.
Great article, Nagiko. For my part, I'd have to say FF7 and Xenogears. More recently FF12 and Dragon Quest 8. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see FF6 wasn't on your list, especially leading off with the old school PS2, but also because it ends up on just about everyone's favorites list.
I have to promote my underdog favorite for a second here:
Xenogears doesn't get the credit it deserves. I think it was maligned largely by the ADHD population who can't maintain a single line of thought for more than 10 seconds. I will concede that the second disc was crap, but it felt like they ran out of development time and just threw in a narrative summary of what they -wanted- to put in. I'd like to see it remade.