I’m trying to think of any particular point where the thing you’re supposed to do or supposed to go next is vague in Phantasy Star 4. Especially since there’s a “talk” option that basically reminds you exactly what you’re supposed to be doing at any given time, I don’t think I ever got lost playing PS4, even the very first time I played it like 15 years ago.
Okay, but really? You’re comparing the amount of optional content in a game made in 1993 to games made in 2010, both of which can hold far more data than a Sega Genesis cartridge, especially Xenoblade. When I say there’s a lot of sidequests, I hope that comes with a contextual understanding of both storage space issues, and the fact that multiple sidequests and optional dungeons weren’t even a mainstay of the genre at that point.
Also, mind that the Hunter’s Guild missions (I’m assuming that’s why you said “eight sidequests”) are not the only optional content/dungeons in Phantasy Star 4.
That “talk” feature was a fantastic idea, and I wish it had been put into every game. Nothing is more annoying than picking up a game after going without playing it for awhile and muddling around for an hour or so trying to remember what you’re supposed to be doing.
Since we are talking about Phantasy Star, I just started playing Generation 1, the PS2 remake of Phantasy Star 1. Although I’ve not played it for more than 15 minutes yet, I like how it feels and plays exactly the same, but with modernized graphics and improved interface, so it’s very much more playable. I’m hoping the whole game is as good as my first impression.
@Phantasy Star Generations remakes: Me too. I’m still a bit salty on the “Hey, we’ve got this cool remake of an old school game that you migh-uup sorry, we didn’t nor did we ever have such a game. What are you even talking about? Amirite?”, because it really did look cool and I wanted to see what they did with those games, especially Generation 2.
I remember getting burnt out somewhere late in the game (like right after the carnivorous trees) due to all the backtracking, and that’s what I’m thinking of. But then again, I think my comment was mostly directed towards the first three games (which you cannot tell me are not loaded with bullshit like figuring out how to get party members to join you, or getting into Baya Mayla or trying to find some of those by-world connectors, to name but one example from each). Also, I totally forgot about the Memo feature…more games really needed things like that.
Okay, but really? You’re comparing the amount of optional content in a game made in 1993 to games made in 2010, both of which can hold far more data than a Sega Genesis cartridge, especially Xenoblade. When I say there’s a lot of sidequests, I hope that comes with a contextual understanding of both storage space issues, and the fact that multiple sidequests and optional dungeons weren’t even a mainstay of the genre at that point.
Also, mind that the Hunter’s Guild missions (I’m assuming that’s why you said “eight sidequests”) are not the only optional content/dungeons in Phantasy Star 4.
I’m referring to the fact that stuff like Air Castle isn’t actually a sidequest, even though it certainly feels like it. I will admit that the Wreckage and Anger Tower are.
That said, when you put it that way, it was indeed solid in the optional content department for a game made in 1993-94. Though FFVI (and V) beat it handily, if at the expense of having their later halves devolve into a collect-a-thon of characters/weapons/magic.
Granted, the first three games are obtuse. …But, I was talking about how, in Phantasy Star 4, you actually accomplish a whole lot of stuff, both in advancing the plot forward as well as optional content, in a comparably short time to other games (and why this makes the game easy to replay). For anyone who’s ever played the series, these points are clearly not-applicable to the first three, and it’s why I wasn’t talking about them.
Most early RPGs were like that though, vague and had you exploring and grinding a lot to make it seem deeper and longer than it actually was. Final Fantasy was no different in terms of vagueness, the only difference was that you had all of your characters to start, whereas Phantasy Star and some others (thinking Miracle Warriors here) made you work to get your party. As time went on though, much like with any other genre of video games, the developers found out what worked and what didn’t. Phantasy Star IV changed the scope of linear RPGs by adding character development, cutscenes, sidequests, and by speeding up the process and making it less-grindy than the others before it. Final Fantasy IV came a couple years before PS4 and did a very good job in advancing what we knew as RPGs with a really good story and character development, though the game was very linear as well with only a couple of side-dungeons.
Fast forward to Final Fantasy VII. Though I still think that this game is vastly over-rated, it did become a measuring stick as to what an RPG should be like. Many games have since surpassed it but it brought the genre into the limelight. Things have advanced so much since then and now any RPG that comes out has to have so many things different from the other.
To me, the gameplay of each RPG could be the same and I wouldn’t care. As an author, the greatest aspect of an RPG to me is the story, and so long as I don’t see similar stories crossing over into different games (I could probably spot story clones easily… for the most part anyway), if the story is good, I’ll play. That’s how I managed to finish Earthbound. The game was standard as far as RPG gameplay goes, but the story and the humor kept me playing till the end.
I found a translation patch for G1, and for G2 as well, though I’m not sure off the top of my head if the G2 patch is actually complete. If you can get your hands on a PS2 emulator and the correct rom, then you can play 'em that way.
I definitely used to feel that way, but now, the jRPG’s niche of being the story-driven genre has been made mostly irrelevant. Now, many non-RPGs have expansive narratives with less-restrictive gameplay, and even dramatically less linear gameplay. The fact that jRPGs still have archaic gameplay for the most part is a huge trouble, and the #1 reason that the genre is wildly unpopular in mainstream gaming now. This is partly why some of the older RPGs are so easy to still play, and have aged well: most old Squaresoft RPGs from the Super Nintendo Era have very little grinding and are extremely fast-paced, for example.
But with jRPGs’ gameplay hardly evolving at all (if you take a few steps back, a lot of the “new” systems in jRPGs are things that have been done plenty of times in the past), and other genres offering stronger narratives, there really isn’t a lot of incentive to play new ones anymore. It’s a large part of why I don’t.
If jRPGs are going to make a come back, this is my prediction: the next turn-based jRPG to have mainstream success will:
Be 3D and extremely fast-paced with a “realistic” look instead of an anime-based art style,
Have combat that is a very dramatic departure from the majority of turn-based combat systems, and
Have a narrative that focuses on a theme which is relatively inoffensive, a la Final Fantasy 7 (which, for all its emo soap opera nonsense, contained an excellent allegory about how the exploitation of the environment to bolster our wealth is causing irreparable damage to the earth, and that we might want to stop before it’s too late. An interesting theme which is inoffensive enough for even kids to read about, see “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss).
…Otherwise, I just try to play RPGs that have really unique settings, a la SaGa Frontier, Xenoblade, Phantasy Star, Legend of Mana, etc.
excellent points. the jRPG genre (gee, I remember a day when we never put the j in front of RPG) is in a bad decline. Hell, that’s probably why Sega won’t make a traditional Phantasy Star anymore. They’ve achieved more popularity through PSO and PSU which incorporate the action-RPG style very well. I think people these days want more button mashing and games that keep them on their toes rather than something to sit down, read through, input commands, and watch the action. I understand why they would want to. Whenever I play some of the older RPGs in front of my wife, she is practically bored to tears (though she loves Final Fantasy VII, IX, and Legend of Dragoon, but those at least have something unique to them). I tried to get her to at least try Phantasy Star IV, but she couldn’t even sit through that. Another example: she loves the Paper Mario franchise, but she doesn’t like Super Mario RPG (blasphemy, I know ). She loves Dragon Age but won’t touch Knights of the Old Republic. The liked Tales of Symphonia but doesn’t want to try Xenoblade Chronicles (though she admits to liking the story and soundtrack).
All in all, I think that people really don’t know what they like. All I know is that they like what they like and they don’t need a reason to, and that’s cool by me. “I do what I do, and that’s it.”
I must be a pretty odd one then, still playing RPGs that came out the year I was born. :v
I have noticed modern RPGs really don’t have that much to hook me, as compared to classics like you’d find on the SNES or PSX. I honestly couldn’t say whether that’s the nostalgia factor, or whether modern games simply aren’t as good. I do know that I was complaining in 2002 about how game designers stopped focusing on gameplay and story, which were the things that made video games interesting, in favour of ever “improving” graphics. I don’t think that is a problem that has gone away, either.
I think part of it is becoming more familiar with the tropes, plotlines and mechanics that JRPGs have spent years spamming but we keep looking back fondly on due to reminding us of our [STRIKE]misspent[/STRIKE] youths. Part of it is the fact that with all the old common ground treaded, devs are going in either more obscure or more Aniamu directions in the hope of appealing to that uberniche market of Japan (the only market for almost all JRPG devs still in existence today). And another part could be that as technology advances, more and more devs are gunning for bigger gameplay times and more overwrought melodrama.
I mean, when A Link Between Worlds came out in 2013, I thought that game was short as hell when I beat it for the first time. It then immediately occurred to me that its roughly as long and involved as A Link to the Past was originally (a few of the dungeons were a bit shorter for ALTTP2, but other than that, they’re fairly similar size-wise). We’re so used to playing long and involved JRPGs, that going back to something that’s both Old-school and New-School was practically a culture shock.
Then again, the games that are trying to appeal to older fans, tend to swing wide or not at all. Again with ALBW, the plot in that game felt much lighter and softer than ALTTP. In the original, the plot was standard Zelda faire (well, it’d become standard Zelda faire with that game), but you had things like your Uncle, the King and the Priest dying and all the people in the Dark World were transformed and sometimes stuck as a bush or a tree. ALBW, had a bunch of characters turned into paintings and the Lorule residence were just mask wearing hippies most of the time. The biggest stakes was Lorule falling apart, Zelda and a bunch of other NPCs getting kidnapped and Yuga post-Ganon hijacking.
You also have other examples like Kemco, just Kemco. Every JRPG they’ve made within the last decade was molded out of a printing press. Sure the graphics look old-school, but every game they make feels more like Temco’s Secret of the Stars rather than anything like FFVI or BoF2. Each of them have the exact same generic JRPG hero encountering the exact same generic JRPG love interest, and is joined by stock JRPG archetypes, on their generic adventure to save the world from the same generic JRPG villain + cronies, discover the same genericly mystic origins of the generic hero, find the exact same generic legendary sword of legendariness, and go through the exact same hoops of save this village by finding plot coupon A and save the King by finding plot coupon B.
And then there’s Squeenix with Bravely Default and its “Remember how FFV was a really cool and great game entirely because of its Jobs system? Well now we’re making a game where you get to run around a World Map collecting Jobs just like the first half of FFV. Second half? Oh yeah, we totally got that covered when we got that guy who wrote Chaos;Head and Stein’s;Gate, two of the most ‘well’ written VNs ever made, to come up with some reason for your party to continue adventuring once you have all the Jobs. What can possibly go wrong?” And that’s not even touching all the Mobile crap they’ve been cranking out like All the Bravest and Record Keeper.
And finally, Breath of Fire VI. Now wait a minute! Hear me out. I know that series being revived for Mobile of all things is worthy, but as hard as it is to say, the way that game’s been shaping up, it feels like it might have a better idea of what the 16-bit era was like than any of the above.
I suppose my tl;dr (if I actually had one to begin with) is that what most JRPG devs gunning for the oldskool crowd seem to forget was that those old games were the way they were, wasn’t just because of the technical limitations, it was the developers’ efforts to make due and circumvent those limitations. You don’t get that these days as most developers have a hard time using all the resources available to them in an effective manner (if they even bother at all), while those that try to aim for the oldskool seem to think that just demoting everything down to pixelated graphics is good enough.
One thing I’d say is that where jRPGs have most glaringly failed to evolve is tying in gameplay and story/action in a meaningful way. You can look at something like Super Mario to see a simple example of this - I have to save the princess, to do that I keep moving forward and jumping on enemies. It’s a simple tie-in, but it makes you, the player, awesome for doing it.
This is the biggest difference between FF7 and FF13 for me. In 7, if something awesome was happening, you were doing it. Riding an awesome motorcycle while fighting off enemies to keep your health up? That’s you! Snowboarding down a mountain to try and land in a good position? Weird, but still you! Making a parade look good, or a send off…that’s you too! In 13, if something awesome was happening…it was happening in a cutscene. In this way, FF actually took a huge step backwards between linking gameplay and story/action with 13. If something awesome is happening, I want to be doing it, not watching it. And I don’t want to be doing it as a quick time event either.
It’s almost like…the rise and fall of the Japanese RPG mirrors quite nicely the rise and fall of the Japanese economy and society itself. Not exactly a recession or a depression so much as a stagnation and inability to adapt to a new world.
Watch me make huge sweeping statements about entire societies and cultures right here in dis thread
Yeah, I have the Prepare to Die Edition so I’ve done the DLC. All told, it’s one of the best DLC packs I’ve played in a long time. It adds a substantial amount of content and I really like the way it expanded the lore. It’s also been a blast to watch my stats skyrocket.
I’ve since started Dark Souls 2 and I just got the first Great Soul, I’m now at the Huntsman’s Copse after beating the rooftop gargoyles. It’s basically more of everything that made Dark Souls fantastic. Technically it’s a much better game, especially since it natively runs at 60 FPS and it’s easier to find other players because the servers aren’t poop. I will say that the level design is a bit weaker this time around. Areas feel a bit more designed with specific paths in mind, and all of the bosses thus far have been variations of big dude in armor.
I can’t decide if bringing Ornstein back was an incredibly clever cameo or if From Software was too cheap to design a new boss, but either way, it’s pretty cool.
I actually did read a preposterously long article on Kotaku a few years back, written by an American who lived in Japan, that implied that this definitely is an overall problem in all aspects of their culture. That, rather than be progressive, all forms of commercial businesses from the game industry to the food industry have a sort of mentality of “this particular thing about our last product was popular, so next time, let’s make a product that’s ONLY that.” He told a story this popular restaurant chain in Japan, Choco Cro, that used to be some other restaurant chain entirely that served a whole variety of food…but, since their Chocolate Croissant was such a popular item, they rebranded themselves as a restaurant chain that ONLY sells different variations of chocolate croissants.
Out of boredom and because they were on sale, I went and snapped up Pikmin 3 and Captain Toad’s Treasure Trackers. Captain Toad looks dumb but entertainingly so. I’ll post impressions as I get further.
my wife has been playing Captain Toad on and off. It’s actually quite well done with just enough challenge to keep people of any age entertained. that being said, I’ve yet to play it
then again, my wife is going to be hogging the Wii U for a while because of the new Mario Kart 8 DLC that releases the 200cc class. So much for me to practice speed running Super Mario World unless I want to search for my SNES and hook it up to my Capture Card… which today I really don’t plan on doing
I guess it means back to World of Warcraft… at least the game is free to play so long as you have the gold for it now.
Beat Captain Toad and 100%'d the first book yesterday, and I have been clearing the bonus stages since (since I had Super Mario 3D World bundled with the system I got everything but the Toad Amiibo BS). It indeed was an entertaining game, and it is in fact amusing to see how even doing something minor like having you cart around the rest of the Toad Brigade can increase the challenge on the stages they reused for it. That said, I’m just a little disappointed that you can’t just choose to play as either Toad or Toadette, but that’s like the most minor thing in the world.
Anyways, I ended up getting Yoshi’s New Island for my Club Nintendo reward and Star Tropics 2 with the last of my coins since I went and got F-Zero Maximum Velocity on sale along with Captain Toad and Pikmin 3, so I’m finally done with that service.
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT IS WRONG ABOUT YOUR CULTURE SNORT
But seriously, that’s the dumbest thing ever. There’s definitely issues with the Japanese economy, but lack of diversity of options or innovation is obviously not high on the list of issues. Japanese companies may not be as cutting edge innovative as they used to be, but if any thing that’s more because other countries are catching up, and not because Japanese companies are getting worse at innovating.
As for only sticking to one thing, that’s absurd. I mean…just take kit kats. There’s like 8 bajillion flavors of kit kats, it’s absurd. Every time I fly through Narita, I make sure to pick up the latest crazy variety they’ve come up with. That’s because they like different flavors over there than we do here. Similarly, Japanese companies make games for Japanese audiences. I like Killmore’s explanation too, but I think it’s more just that American companies have gotten better at making games for Western audiences since 20 years ago.
). She loves Dragon Age but won’t touch Knights of the Old Republic. The liked Tales of Symphonia but doesn’t want to try Xenoblade Chronicles (though she admits to liking the story and soundtrack).
worthy, but as hard as it is to say, the way that game’s been shaping up, it feels like it might have a better idea of what the 16-bit era was like than any of the above.