Valkyrie-Favor wrote:An RPG's main selling point is its narrative.
No, it's not. Not for everyone. I play RPGs because I enjoy them as games! If I want to see a terrible anime, I can watch that. Or I can watch a good one.
I'm not playing Dragon Warrior III for its story. It's the survivalist challenge where dungeons are terrifying and resources are scarce. I'm not playing Yggdra Union for its story I'm playing it for unfair battles with Union tactics and long-term growth planning. I'm playing Final Fantasy XII for the dungeons, not its mess of a plot. RPGs have a lot more to offer and I think that's why most gamers play them.
What I said does not apply to SRPGs, dungeon crawlers, rogue-likes or action RPGs. There's other genres that offer pure survival challenge: dungeon crawlers, RPGs/games with RPG elements that have a survivalism mode (S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Fallout New Vegas), a rogue-like or an actual survival game (Robinson's Requiem etc, I don't think that many of these exist). That way I'm not forced to follow a plot I don't care about
Jmustang1968 wrote:I find it a bit amusing how the JRPGs are being described negatively as antiquated on a site that celebrates retro games.
You can't judge an old game by modern standards. Clearly I stated that the oldschool JRPG formula worked marvelously during the 1980s and early/mid 1990s. And I do not think that " new old school" RPGs are a bad thing if the games offer the kind of depth and challenge (Legend of Grimrock, Etrian Odyssey, all the upcoming Kickstarter projects etc) that modern RPGs don't, rather than being just more unbalanced and grindy. Mid/late 1990s+early 2000s RPGs>modern RPGs.
Retronomy wrote:
This all sounds convincing until you apply that same logic to other genres.
Platformers: All you do is press the jump button, really!
Shmups: dodge and shoot, yawn~
Point and Click Adventure: You... point and click.
The difference is that a platformer can challenge the player even if the gameplay is just based around timing jumps correctly. Just look at Sonic, or Super Meat Boy, which is a really challenging game. The same thing certainly applies to SHMUPs. Point and click games are about figuring out puzzles rather than the gameplay mechanics themselves.
RPGs on the other hand often don't utilize their game mechanics very well. You can get away from random battles by simply spamming attack and heal in most games. If that's the case then the battles dont really benefit from being turn-based, as you could do those same commands in a real time battle and battles would take much less time in turn.
. But the most popular RPGs in America do not really have challenging dungeons. I think a lot of gamers find comfort in how easy a turn based RPG can often be, and grindy ones can often be intimidating (or just boring to some people).
