Waitin' For Its Cover To Be Blown

Well, I'm back. Sort of. Things have gotten a bit better. I'm still behind on my thesis, and that doesn't seem to be changing, but other than that things are going better. I still don't have much to say though. I'm working on it.

For starters, I've found a new place to live. Some people already knew this, others probably don't care, but I've still found a new place. Of course, it is with my room mate from first year, and we did part on less than positive terms, but this time it's an apartment, and not a 12'x15' room. Plus it's a nice building, great location (directly across the street from the new grocery store) and not 20 minutes from school — the last bit being important when it's feckin' cold out.

I've also been spending money again, something I haven't done in a while. I found a copy of Good Omens when I was at Chapters — tucked away in the middle of the M authors. (*insert puzzled expression*) I also found acopy of Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne on sale (and had to restrain myself from buying any other CDs that were on sale), along with a copy of the old SNES game Desert Strike (Hellllllllllllo early 90s!), and finally decided to add a copy of Final Fantasy Origins to the pile of RPGs I've yet to finish. (Current list: Dragon Warrior VII, Star Ocean: The Second Story, Legend of Legaia, Suikoden II, Breath of Fire III, Final Fantasy Tactics, Shenmue, Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, Robotrek, Secret of Evermore. Ok, so that last one is justifiable if I don't finish it.)

Come to think of it, Chrono Cross, Suikoden, and Lunar: Silver Star Story were the only RPGs I've completed since the days of the SNES. I just hit the 'well, you've exhausted most of the story, now it's just walking around fighting until you're strong enough to take on the boss' bits, get bored, and never get around to turning the thing back on. That and the fact that random battles still get to me. Although the 'they aren't random, but good luck avoiding them' battles from Chrono Cross got to me eventually too. I still haven't found anything as bad as Tale of Phantasia though.

For those of you who've never played it: Tales of Phantasia was a Japan-only RPG for the SNES, some consider it one of the best SNES RPGs ever made — I wouldn't know, I gave up on it after only two bosses. The game kept track of both how long you had played and how many battles you had fought. I was averaging 2 battles every minute, not counting time spent in towns/cut scenes/other places where there were no enemies. It's not that the fights themselves were long, as they were generally over in a matter of seconds. It's that you couldn't make it from one side of a screen to the other without getting in at least one fight. From what I could see it certainly appeared to be an enjoyable game, but if I had wanted to do nothing but hack away at inexhaustible waves of enemies every couple of seconds I would have been playing Diablo.

So it would seem this is turning into my standard RPG rant then, well I may as well come to my final point: The things that turn me off from most modern RPGs and keep me from finishing them (despite the fact I still buy tons of them).

1. Length

I'm not asking for a short 10-hour RPG from everyone, but you don't have to make a huge, long, 'dear god how much time have I spent on this?' game to make it good. This ties in nicely with the next point.

2. Story

I'll be honest, most RPG stories don't hold my attention anymore. I mean, how many more variations on the 'empire revives ancient evil' theme do we really need? (Ok, so that may have changed by now, but for some reason I doubt it. Very few of the RPGs in my collection happen to vary from it by more than a little bit, and most of the ones I've seen that I didn't buy followed the same basic story.)

3. Battles

Oh boy. This is a big one. I don't just mean random encounters, I mean the entire basic battle system. You know, the 'line up 3-4 characters on one side, opponents on the other, wait until the progress bar for one character fills up, then choose an action. There's slight variations to this (You can't see the progress bar! You can move them forwards or backwards to reduce damage!) , but if you've played an RPG you get the idea. Of course, there's always something that's radically different (i.e. The more damage you do, the more powerful spell you can cast) to slightly different (i.e. Hit the attack button at just the right time for extra damage…wait, didn't I already see this in Super Mario RPG?) with each game, but since it either doesn't do much other than make you hit an extra button or can only be done so rarely that it makes little difference you wind up feeling like it's the same battles you've always fought but with different animations. Combine this with the fact that I think I've seen this story before and, well frankly, I don't care that much anymore.

Is it always like this? Of course not. There's great examples of games that twist the conventions of the genre a bit. The Suikoden series (at least on the PS1), twist the standard plot devices nicely; either making you defeat the character who seems to be setup to be the main villain about half way through, or never letting you fight them at all. (The fighting system is fairly standard: you have 6 characters, can do double, triple, or even quintuple team attacks (ok, so that's a little unusual), and you line up to face the enemy. The major difference is that it's turn-based. You select all your characters actions prior to each round, then you and the enemies perform them and you see the results. It can be just as maddening as it sounds.) But for the most part, the console RPG seems to have stagnated there. There's a few strategic RPGs released every now and then (Tactics, Suikoden II's massive army battles), but for the most part they all seem to conform to the 'line up on one side, enemy lines up on the other' conventions that have been in place since the NES.

I was going to work in something about the Fallout series in here (which doesn't follow battle system conventions and breaks storyline conventions in that it's completely non-linear and possible to beat the game at level one if you pick your skills properly) but it's not quite the same thing, seeing as it's for the PC -- a platform which has completely different flaws in its RPGs — and I've also lost my train of thought. Which means that you should know what's coming up.

That's right, it's yet another long, flawed, ranting entry without a satisfying conclusion. Score!

(So much for not having much to say… Geez Andrew, think out your argument first.)

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