Just to be clear up front… I’m mostly discussing what people now call “JRPGs.” Some of my complaints do overlap with the western variety, but as it happens, I only liked Western for a brief period during the MS-DOS and Windows days. While I love Windows 98, by that point I mostly stuck to the console variety of the PS1 and PS2… until I got bored of RPGs and moved on to other genres.
It’s true though… for a long time I was an RPG freak. My starter drug was Final Fantasy VI for the Super Nintendo (I won’t get into the whole renaming issue–most people know it as part six and that’s what I’m calling it, no matter what the cartridge label says). My tastes evolved over the years.. for a long time I basically couldn’t stand anything that wasn’t a Squaresoft style game, then I branched out. The biggest U-turn I took was later discovering I actually prefer NES RPGs in terms of gameplay despite this being an era I completely missed growing up. These days, its accurate to say the NES has the RPGs my head likes, while the SNES has the RPGs my heart likes.
Unfortunately this is a genre that just did not hold up like, at all. As I got older, I started to dislike the way the genre was going. By the Playstation 2 I basically didn’t like the genre anymore.
Let me count the ways.
ONE. Older ones were less complicated.
A thing that happens to me a lot is I get overwhelmed by all the systems and sub-systems RPGs tend to have nowadays. Now, admittedly often its just a case of word-salad–JRPG developers for some reason like to make up terminology for already understood concepts–but it still creates an effect where they’re throwing words and terms at you and I’m like “hold on, what the hell?”
The worst cases are when the game really is too nuts for its own good. I call this “Chrono Cross syndrome.” I know Chrono Cross has its fans…. well, they’re wrong. I couldn’t tell you if the story is good, because I could never get past the stupid gameplay where every command has a variable you can choose from, or even the most simple of procedures (like, say, buying items from a shop) has an extra step you must take.
To be fair, I think this would make sense if there was some gameplay reason for it… but in this case it felt like the developer just thought more steps equaled depth and complexity. Which it doesn’t.
Making me choose between weak, medium, and hard physical attack rarely adds anything to battle systems. Save that stuff for Street Fighter II.
TWO. Older ones made better use of what they had.
Here’s an irony I noticed… a lot of those complex systems are done for the sake of giving games “depth.” An admirable goal, but the problem is they rarely succeed. Very often they’re just putting on the appearance of depth and complexity without actually having it. No matter how many extra button presses you put it under, “just use your most powerful attack over and over” is not depth.
Here’s a funny thing… the moment I realized this was while playing Dragon Warrior on the NES. During one of my sessions, I was losing against a monster I was too weak to be taking on, and just as a joke, I tried casting the Sleep spell.
…. And it worked.
The reason I didn’t expect it to work is because in the RPGs I was raised on, it basically never did–there was even a mention in the grand list of RPG cliches that buffs, debuffs, and status effects always work on you but never the enemy. RPG combat tends to always be just “hit them with their weakness over and over.”
And funny thing this lack of depth is largely a problem RPG devs brought upon themselves. Like here’s an idea… maybe stop making status effects useless? Maybe stop designing systems where the only option is “hit their weak spot for massive damage?”
Some early games took this even farther. For example in the PC game Pool of Radiance, any enemy put to sleep or paralyzed could be insta-killed with any physical attack, no matter how many hit points they have. Eye of the Beholder also let you do things like lure enemies into traps or throw random stuff from your inventory at them.
I do wanna give props to one PS2-era RPG that did right: Final Fantasy XII is one of the few games where you actually can strategize and find ways to win against overwhelming odds… for the most part. Trying to take down that dinosaur-like monster in the area outside the starting down is doable. Taking down an Elemental is an endgame-level achievement. Still, its the kind of thing I want to see more of.
THREE. Older games were less time consuming.
This is a general thing that goes with technology and, in particular, the advent of 3D worlds. It’s a strange duality… on one hand I look at the sights in something like Xenoblade Chronicles or Dragon Quest VIII and I feel like its a vast world I want to see more of…. until I actually start doing that.
Big 3D worlds are pretty, but they’re usually also empty voids. Seeing beautiful vistas and skylines eventually just becomes routine, and I long for the days when it took a matter of minutes to travel from town to town.
This goes for battles as well. The first time you see your character do their awesome Tekken combo, its (theoretically) epic. The three thousandth and thirty-first time though, I miss the days when games just said “Character did X, here’s how much damage he did!” in a text window I could quickly tap buttons through.
On that note….
FOUR. The inversion of the Power Fantasy aspect.
I mean, part of the appeal of any RPG is the appeal of playing as a cool character who kicks serious ass, but…. well, I feel like this is done all sorts of wrong nowadays. Usually when you start a modern RPG, your character right out of the gate knows some cool special technique… even if they’re supposed to be an untrained nobody. A bigger problem, too, is that a lot of times they easily stomp everything in the local area.
In other words… basically, in modern RPGs, your hero is awesome and kewl from the word go.
In the old days, you had to earn that.
Now to be fair, this could at times lean into the classic complaint that older RPGs had “too much grinding” (which sometimes was very valid). A lot of times though, it was more accurate to say you had to play smart. A level one party had to know when to fight or run, or whether now was an appropriate time to use one of your once-a-day sleep spells.
These days, your resources are basically unlimited. If Final Fantasy I were made today, every battle would be just “Black Mage casts sleep, then your party spends turns killing everyone.” Back then though, you had to do mental calculus: Do I think I can survive this battle or should I use magic? If I wind up low on resources, do I continue on into the wilderness hoping I find something or do I go back to where I know safety and civilization exists?
And it actually makes the power fantasy aspect that much better. You start out playing as a scrappy underdog (or party of such) who has to survive by their wits, and evolve into a demigod… and that is made all the sweeter because you have a tangible experience of having once been at the bottom of the food chain. Essentially, modern RPGs rob you of this in favor of making you a cool overpowered guy almost immediately…. unless they go the Dark Souls direction and make your life a neverending struggle. It’s always this extremely basic binary with modern gaming.
FIVE. Older Ones had less equipment, but it was more meaningful.
This is kind of an extension of the previous point, but heck with it. Basically I sometimes feel modern RPGs give you too much loot, and a lot of it winds up being functionally similar.
One of my favorite moments when playing Might and Magic for the NES was this time I got a new spear as an enemy drop, and equipped it just to see how it worked (this was before RPGs just outright told you the stats)… and I went from having to kill a local monster type in three hits to being able to kill it in just one. See, that felt like an upgrade.
Most RPGs today, I feel like I have to just take the game’s word for it that the weapon with the higher numbers is actually any better. A lot of times I don’t even see a noticeable difference.
Ironically this kinda feels like a commentary on video game console technology. When you went from the Atari 2600 to the NES to the SNES to the N64, each time there was a clear jump, a reason this was necessary. These days though I struggle to notice a difference between a Switch game and its “higher end” PC port, which is one reason I don’t even want Nintendo to make a Switch 2–what could it provide that the console we got can’t already do?
I’m also gonna insert just real quick that I have to agree with the Spoony One’s Final Fantasy 13 review at the part where he talks about the upgrade system… I don’t like “this new sword starts out weaker but if you do some extra step it might be better” because that’s just such a huge middle finger to the player, and totally misunderstands the joy you’re supposed to have at finding a new sword or axe or thingy, and such systems instead feel like they encourage you to stick with what you have and basically ignore anything new. Huh… another subtle commentary on the state of gaming…
SIX…. and a bunch of little things.
So these aren’t worth a full section but they’re things I want to mention.
One thing I recall impressing me when I played Dragon Warrior on NES was that instead of the game blatantly telling you where to go, you had to actually talk to the various NPCs and figure it out from what they told you. In other games, NPCs could clue you in on secrets or tell you about techniques that might work on tough monsters, or other things that make seeking these guys out worthwhile. This is a thing I wish would be brought back… these days you only talk to NPCs if they hand out quests, otherwise they’re just a waste of time. Even on the SNES I was basically trained to only ever talk to the ones that advance the plot.
I mentioned before that I don’t like how modern JRPGs are in love with made-up terminology, especially for something that is already an understood concept. It kinda reminds me of someone making a Sonic original character by just coloring Sonic green and saying “this is my new character, Insert Name Here the Hedgehog! Do not steal!” In the worst excesses, you get something like Final Fantasy 13 which is just this incomprehensible word vomit. It comes off as obscurantism.
Similar to the point about travelling earlier, I don’t like how drawn-out stories have gotten in these games. There used to be this idea you play RPGs primarily for the plot, but lets face it… most of them are just typical anime stories that occasionally make you manually walk to the next plot point. Say what you will about Mystic Quest and its occasional silliness, but at least it gets to the damn point.
And a slightly more…. ehhh I’m not sure what the right word for this is, but like, modern RPGs tend to have overlap with modern trends in general I don’t care for. Like I don’t like modern anime art, but of course a modern game is gonna have modern art styles. Just look up an image of how the look of someone like Adol Cristin from Ys has evolved over the years…. I tend to find the modern takes make him look like a dork. Sure in the 80s and 90s he looked like a generic anime character but so what?
And another issue I have with character design is how characters dress. Why do Japanese characters always wear these impractical, idiotic-looking outfits? The only time it makes sense is in something like the dot-Hack series where its supposed to take place inside an MMO. Otherwise, you have to imagine that either these characters never bathe or they literally spend hours dressing and undressing. Its like they’re designed more to be posed as dolls than to be believable characters (which is probably exactly the case).
At least Maxim from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals was just a guy wearing a breastplate.
Also, not to sound like a feminist, but I really hate how all women in RPGs (and anime) all look the same… I mean this has been true for awhile but somehow its especially noticable that you keep seeing the same hourglass figure. The only time you get away from it is when the artstyle is something like Lucky Star or Puyo Puyo Tetris which outright forbids it.
Don’t take this the wrong way.
I’m not saying I hate JRPGs now–I mentioned liking Final Fantasy XII, and Persona 5 so far is pretty good. But a lot of times I wish things were done slightly different.
And I know there’s a trend of retro-style RPGs (particularly by Kemco on the Switch eShop)… but those aren’t exactly a satisfying replacement for the lost era. They are still undeniably modern RPGs, just they’re wearing the skin of something older. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but wears a facemask and holds up a sign saying “I’m totally a lion!”…. its probably a duck.
jispylicious 