Side Post!

Today's Side Post will be all about...the changing of video game RPG style!

Classic RPGs VS Current RPGs


Round 1 - Classic RPGs
(For this post, RPG = video game AND role playing game = pen & paper)
     Classic RPGs are basically the oldies. Anything that was more or less the standard of RPG before the last generation of consoles (PS2, Xbox, GCN). I am referring to the turn-based RPG style of yesteryear. This style of RPG game play was the original style, and it was (more or less) taken from the popular pen and paper role playing games, such as Dungeons and Dragons. D&D and most role playing games play along the style of everybody getting turns. Each person chooses what they want to do (going from fastest to slowest) and the actions happen in that order. This is more or less how old RPGs went about it. Your team of heroes went in order based on their speed stats and chose their actions to perform. After everybody chose, it all goes down at one time. It makes the action bits go all swift and cool-like. Going back to the main point of Round 1...
     RPGs used to be about strategically choosing your moves and spells as to get the best results. Basically, you saved your big spells for the bosses, healed your party as they needed it, and took out the hard enemies first! If you were a certain type of gamer though (like I kinda became), you eventually got tired of specifically choosing attacks and started just mashing the physical attack option. This meant that even the weak and pitiful mage would smack everybody with his rod or staff. However, it generally gets you through the battle faster because everybody else could actually deal out damage. Also, it was pointless in most situations to waste your magic on lower enemies when you needed them to deal out the big damage to the boss. Turn based RPGs were basically the standard of RPG back in those days. Some games stood out from this and did quite well despite their limitations, but I don't know if all of them could/would be considered an RPG title. The only title I can think of that might fit that is Brave Fencer Musashi (an old PS1 title). Now for the next point!
     Next up in Round 1 is the common and arguably annoying Random Battles! This is just how it goes for (yet again) RPGs and role playing games. You get in random encounters for possible experience, money, and sometimes items. If you are like me, you tend to walk around in circles so you can farm up some extra money and experience. Unfortunately, they always seem to occur when you don't want them or need to get back to town to heal. You dash for the nearest healing or save point so that you don't lose it all...when suddenly a giant monster bear thing jumps out and kills you. Screw you monster bear thing! On the more challenging side, random battles keep you on your toes! Although you might be safe some of the time, you never know when an enemy will step out and try to beat you. Anyways, random battles have been a staple for RPGs all the way up until more recently....More on that in Round 2!
     Old RPGs are the classics. Games like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, the older Final Fantasy titles, are all examples of great memorable games. If you grew up playing old RPGs, you remember that they had fun yet emotional stories, lots of battles, lovable and/or annoying characters, and more! You can never forget that rag-tag team of random misfits with nothing in common outside of the end goal to save the world one way or another! This is so easily seen in old RPGs when you have a group of four to five people that look and battle nothing alike! If nothing else, old RPGs gave you more than enough time for your money. Many of these old games could easily eat up 30 or more hours of your life, if not more! They may not have been perfect, but they provided enough entertainment for me.
     Overall, the classic RPG lineup is basically that...classic, but many people might refer to them as old instead. Many of them haven't withstood the test of time. They are old with outdated (and sometimes broken) systems of play. Sometimes an old RPG gets remakes, but the chances of this are slim and limited to the larger titles (Namely Final Fantasy). Thankfully, despite this age, many of them shine as well as they did back in the day! I would gladly go back and pick up Earthbound to play through the fun, the challenge, and the nostalgia! One of the greatest things offered by classic RPGs is the nostalgia of remembering when you played it long ago. That wonderful feeling that can sometimes cause you to spend a lot of money that you don't need to spend on some great games. (Seriously, if you are even remotely curious, go look up on eBay how much most SNES RPGs go for. Would greatly advise using ROMs and emulators for people who want to try old RPGs.) I wouldn't give up any of these classic RPGs for anything, but I don't plan to ignore all of the future. Now...on to Round 2! Current RPGs!

Round 2 - Current RPGs
     First and foremost, the "current RPG" that I'm referring to is how most RPGs are turning to Live Action versus Turn Based. I realize that not all of them are doing this, but if you look over it, a large majority are going this direction. Titles that I would include in this style are games like Mass Effect, Fate of Resonance,  and typical MMO titles like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars. Keep in mind, I'm not saying these are bad games, not at all. I'm just trying to state the major change that has happened to the world of RPGs. Role playing games aren't free from this either! The 4th edition of D&D took a fairly different approach to how the game was played. Many elements of it were compressed and simplified for people new to role playing while also trying to attract the video game crowd. Now...on to the first part!
     The most obvious way in which they change from the old style is the game play. Rather than having turns, everybody and everything are just running around actively and attacking each other with swords, guns, or magic. No more commands or boxes! Generally, you have a health gauge, possibly a magic gauge (or something similar), and sometimes ammo and item selections. This can be a fairly fun style of gameplay. Although it doesn't always require strategy, it can be easy to back yourself into a corner by making mistakes.  The only problem that tends to arise from this...AI allies. Your AI allies tend to fight all out by using any and all things available to them. This sounds great...until they start wasting their MP/special points/whatever and gets better when they start using up items. A few titles managed to fix this with better AI, but the AI is never perfect. Thankfully, the next solution was adding in a sort of command slot system. You make the AI do X action during X condition and keep them from doing X action unless X happens first. That's a lot of Xs, but it keeps from from doing stupid stuff all the time. Either way, it's a fun new happy time battle system! It still can face the same flaw for me as Turn based though. After a while, I start doing the same move/moves over and over just to beat minor enemies. Next up, the enemy encounter system.
     Sticking with the same style as Round 1, this portion is going to deal with enemy encounters! Considering that it's all live action, they general format of enemy encounters is them being flung into the environment. Enemies waddle/walk/whatever around the map. This means you can attack them at your leisure, and sometimes, you can walk past them entirely! It's generally not a good idea to walk past all of them, but many games will let you walk past them without any real negative outside of a lack of levels/experience. Overall, it can be a very nice style if you are looking to kill a specific enemy or need to get back to home base for healing. One problem that can happen here...is if enemies give chase. Most of the time, if they give chase, they will give up after a small ways. This isn't always the case though. Sometimes the enemy AI has been programmed to follow you unto the ends of the earth. It always seems to be the super tough enemy that does this too. Regardless, enemies crawling all over has its advantages and disadvantages. Most of all, it does make an area appear more lived in when it is literally crawling with enemies.
     It might just be me, but I am finding most newer RPGs to have fewer and fewer likable characters. Of course, I can be pretty picky on who I do like. I tend to dislike the majority of the main cast with only a soft spot for one or two people. Many new and recognizable characters have been made in recent RPGs. The stories have grown into large epics spanning multiple games at times! I would mention that the stories don't seem to be as great, but I can't really go forward with that thought without thinking about this. There have been so many games with so many stories that making a new game with a completely unique story has to be incredibly hard if not impossible anymore. That and many of the best story/plot ideas have been done by the old RPGs, movies, and books. On the other hand, it feels like some people aren't trying. I've seen scores of unique games, so when a game comes along and doesn't try to do something new, I just feel disappointed at best. The newest Final Fantasy (13) seems to make my case valid. Although I have yet to play it, the characters and story (from what I read) just feel terrible and all done before. I won't say anymore since I haven't had direct contact with it yet. One good thing is the possibility of stories that are larger and grander than ever before! Mass Effect, by itself, has shown that a massive space odyssey with aliens, robots, and an entire universe to explore can be done successfully and with intrigue abounding! Another great thing about these new RPGs is that they are constantly pushing the boundaries of beautiful and breathtaking cutscenes. Scenes that push graphics to the limit and bring us closer into the RPG world we are walking through. I could go on and on, but I feel my point for this part has been more or less made.
     New RPGs are coming along every year. They aren't all necessarily something we haven't seen before, but many of them do make strides to be different yet cool. Mass Effect (if you consider it RPG) has offered us with an epic space opera that could be compared to Star Wars while also holding anybody with a liking of 3rd person shoot-ary. Beyond that? A good RPG with memorable characters and engaging story. With the rise of online gaming, came the rise of the MMORPG. MMOs offer a great and MASSIVE multiplayer experience while also giving you a dose of RPG goodness. You can buff, nerf, farm, explore, socialize, level, and so much more to your very heart's desire. With most MMOs gaining new content all the time (expansions and such), you could pour endless hours into the game and never get bored. Personally? I'd only play an MMO if I had some friends to play them with...or high speed.  Either way, I have nothing against new RPGs and their new style. Heck, they are just going with the times. Turn-based RPGs still exist here and there, but they are becoming fewer and fewer as they go. Maybe the future will hold something new and different for us.
     On to the final round with some final words and fun times!

Round 3 - They Both Win!...in their Own Ways + My Final Words
     As you can see, I have praised and belittled both sides (although more belittling for the New RPGs). However, each side has their reasons for being the greatness that they are. The classics are both honored yet stuck because they are only that...classics. Many of them will never be heard or seen by scores of people out there, despite the incredible ease one can acquire them. Some people will overlook these titles simply because they are old. The new RPGs show off the power and ability of those in the gaming industry ever year! They show that RPGs can be beautiful, well written, and fun to play for the masses. Despite that, many of them don't really appeal to me nor do they make me want to play them. I've had bad luck in the past with random RPGs, and that has unfortunately turned my opinion to be skeptical of all.
     Overall, Classics are great for being classics, having memorable characters, showing off grand tales and stories, and the old style of gameplay.
     New RPGs constantly stride to be easy to access, lots of fun, and just straight up pretty. With the better hardware, they can even perform and do more than anything the old systems could even think about considering to try and dream of.
     I'll be honest. I've really thrown this thing together, and yet I didn't want to get too much into it. I could have easily doubled or tripled the length of this post. I also could have organized it a might better. It began as a simple thought and evolved into all of this. It's not as much as I'd like to have done, and I even skipped the mention of several titles along the way. All in all, RPGs are great games. They allow us to take place in something far more than we could ever do. They bring us into storybooks full of amazing tales about heroes fighting evil.

To finish off my post...I'm going to suggest some great RPGs for those who have been living under a rock and are clueless where they should go on the classics and the new ones. I will apologize because I haven't played quite all of these, but many of them are considered great if not among the best. I will also probably miss a few titles in there, but I will try to edit it later if I think of more.

Highly Suggest
Chrono Trigger, Dragon Age series, Earthbound, Elder Scrolls series (Namely Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim),  Final Fantasy series (obviously but namely FF6 thru FF9), Grandia series (my favorite RPG ever!), Mass Effect series,  Secret of Mana, Shadow Hearts series (really fun PS2 RPG series), Super Mario RPG

Noteable*
Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross, Dungeons of Dredmor, Evolution Worlds, Fallout 3 or New Vegas, Resonance of Fate (for something different), Paper Mario series, Persona series, Tales of series (large pile of these all over), Threads of Fate, Torchlight, Vagrant Story, Wild Arms series, The Witcher

*Noteable titles are ones that I have either played very little of OR just know very little of. Doesn't mean they aren't worth trying!

If you like a good Tactical RPG...any of these are great suggestions.
Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre series, Front Mission 3, Front Mission 4 (it is okay...suggest 3 over it), Disgaea series (only for the fully dedicated. It is super grindfest with hundreds of hours gameplay necessary.), and I can't think of anymore at the moment.