JRPGs
Final Fantasy VIII, which I just gave up on after reaching Ultimecia’s Castle because it would have been absolutely impossible to make it through with my characters, reminded me of just how weird I find JRPGs in general. There usually is a good story which attempts to relay an even better message, the characters have distinct personalities and you can really get to understand and care for them… But the gameplay is absolutely terrible and the difficulty level makes it nearly impossible to focus on the story while playing. These two parts really don’t seem to go well together.
I do find the Japanese quite strange, and that’s saying a lot when it comes from me, but I wonder if even they truly enjoy these games, with everything they entail, or if they just learned to accept them as they are simply because this is what they’ve been getting for so many years… I really don’t see how can someone truly like these conflicting sides. The difficulty level makes you unable to enjoy the story, the frequent movies and other such elements wreak havok with the game’s pace, the fact that you can’t customize the characters hinders your ability to really relate to them despite their nicely defined personalities and life stories, and the message is just lost somewhere among all this mess!
I believe that Final Fantasy VIII is an excellent example of how to ruin a game by trying to appease two opposite crowds at the same time. I find myself needing to remind everyone of what I wrote in an earlier post about game story modes, because it fits in very well here. I think the hardcore gamers who truly enjoy this kind of gameplay and the challenge of beating a difficult game could really use that “action” setting I described in that post, while the rest of us could use the “story” setting coupled with a lower difficulty. People should of course still be able to choose the “story” setting and a high difficulty if they wish it, but I think the vast majority would pick either one or the other and everyone would be much happier that way.
The other major issue I have with JRPGs is, of course, the fact that they’re made for consoles and even the few that are ported to PCs have awkward controls. I think that if you port a game you should also adapt it to the new platform. Developers who create console versions of PC games seem to be learning that lesson in recent years, at least from what I keep hearing, but it doesn’t seem to work quite so well the other way around. I wonder how much of this is because of the difference between the PC and console gaming markets, as I described it in another earlier post…
