Back in the 80's and 90's the Japanese Role-playing Game (JRPG) genre was huge, at the top of which was the Final Fantasy series. Other notable JRPG games from around this time were the Dragon Quest series (published as Dragon Warrior in the US), Pokemon, Earthbound, The Secret of Mana, the Soul Blazer series, and Chrono Trigger. However, as time moved on consumer taste started to shift towards Western developed games, and although many JRPGs continued to receive positive reviews from critics they just didn't have the same sales power as they had in the past. I believe that the original popularity of the JRPG came from the depth of story and character advancement that they offered the player; most other games at this time were made in an arcade style with trying to get further than before being the main incentive to keep playing. The generally accepted consensus for the JRPG's drop in popularity is that their mechanics became old and tiresome, so let's take a look at some of these mechanics.
Random Encounters: You are walking along trying to advance to story when suddenly random monsters that you don't care about jump out and attack you! Once defeated you are free to continue on your way, that is until the next random filler monster jumps out. This is one of the most common complaints levelled at JRPGs, but when you consider the limitations of the time there was no way to script every encounter in the game. Unfortunately random encounters still make appearances in many modern games, with justifications such as they enable you to advance in level if you need to. One of the easiest way to work around random encounters and still enable additional levelling is to have the monsters visible on the map and leave it up to the player to decide if they wish to engage them.
Grinding: While character advancement is generally fun, forcing a player to fight filler monsters for no reason other than increasing their level enough to advance the story is frustrating. Sometimes people make the complaint that you can be 'over-levelled' as a result of grinding making the main story too easy. In Tales of Symphonia there is a random side quest monster that you are at least five levels to low to even have a chance of defeating the first time you encounter the area it is in, leaving the player with two options, either comeback later or grind until you can defeat it. Due to the ability to set all the characters to full auto grinding can be done with minimal input from the player, making the whole experience rather pointless.
Random Drops: The 'Old Man' wants six MacGuffins which are found on 'Monster X', sometimes. These types of quests are generally quite bland and boring and simply serve as a way to add padding to the game. Sometimes it gets even more stupid, for example in World of Warcraft only some spiders have legs and/or eyes when you try and loot them. The other way that random drops are used/abused is that sometimes a super rare item will only be found on a specific monster, for example The Sword of Kings in Earthbound is a 1:128 drop from a Starman Super.
Railroading: Generally speaking JRPGs force the player to travel through the game along a set path, some option minor quests may also beincluded but for the most part you are going to go from point A to point B. Even Chrono Trigger, famed for having multiple endings, forced the player to move through the game in a set order as going to the wrong time zone generally ends with the characters being killed by something which is too strong for them or simply not advancing the plot.
Lack of Regular Save Points: This was another limitation of the early consoles, but still some games persist in using it. I suppose that the threat of dying can add tension to a play session but losing an hour or more worth of progress is just frustrating.
Being Weird: This final complaint isn't a problem at all as it gives the games a unique Japanese feel and has helped to ensure that they continue to be played even if it is as a niche market.
No comments:
Post a Comment