<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>A lot of people talk about the good old days when FF6 was the pinnacle of RPG or something. For a long time I dismissed such talks as just mere nostaglia (and BTW, FF6 really isn't that good anyway), but recently I've noticed I've quite a pile of RPG gathering dust that I never finished. Okay, maybe I don't play games as much as I used to, so I went back and played Grandia 2 again and found myself playing through the stupidly long ending sequence starting with Valmar Core all the way to the stupidly long ending dialogue. So no, I'm not as jaded with RPG as I thought I am, so why is there so many new RPG I'm not playing?
I think the first problem is that a lot of RPG nowadays are 1-shot RPGs, like Xenogears or Skies of Arcadia. As much as I love these games, I really can't myself playing them again due to Xenogears's insanely long dialogue sequences and Skies of Arcadia's insanely long battle sequences (Xelos takes around 30 minutes to kill in airship form if you didn't have your energy charged on the round he's vulnerable to all attacks). It makes a great game something you don't want to play again and it makes a medicore game something you never finish. The biggest problem I've with recently RPG is that they're too long, and not necessarily in an absolute sense (though I think any RPG over 30 hours is too long, or it better be a VERY good one). There's just too much uninteresting stuff going on before something of interest happens. Take Grandia Xtreme I just brought (a big mistake!), after 2 of the ruins I'm not still even sure what the game is supposed to be about.
Directly related to the length of RPG is the length of battles. Battles in RPG are getting too long. Not only does loading times seem to simply increase, battles themselves tend to get longer due to animation time and whatnot. Back when games are simple, battles simply didn't last that long because there was no 30 second super attacks. I think we've come to realize that RPG battle system isn't going to be evolve beyond the old attack & heal-when-low tactics and yet
Music quality has also declined in RPG, because of the 'bigger is better' tendency, but more music isn't better music. In fact it's usually the opposite. Music provides a huge part in characterization and storytelling of RPGs. Take Schala of Chrono Trigger, who is the living example that music is greater than good characterization. At her core, Schala is a boring mysterious-damsel-in-distress-with-super-powers that almost RPG has. She doesn't even say very much. If she wasn't always associated with Schala's Theme and Chrono Corrodir (the theme of the floating world of Zeal), she would be, well, like the boring Schala of Chrono Cross that no one cares about. I've been looking at some Japanese polls and Chrono Corridor and Schala's theme are #2 and #8 on the fan list. Coincidence? Hardly. I was reading the fanfiction under the "Kid Stab Me!" club and even though I can't understand most of it, even looking at the adjectives used tells me that what they're writing about isn't the girl in the game. It's the girl in the song. Heck, I'm one of them too. In fact, Mistuda's liner on The Girl Who Stole a Star (Kid's theme) says that Kid is his favorite character and her theme is made that way to capture what the game did not. Bad music leads to bad character development. Back in the old days, musicians didn't have to crank out 100 tracks per game so the quality remained high.
Then there is also storytelling. RPG makers don't seem to grasp the idea that they're not good storytellers to begin with, and trans-temporal parallel dimensionism are better explained in a book than in a RPG. I don't expect every RPG to have unique, likeable characters, like Wakka. I don't even expect them to do the generic boring types really well, like anyone in Skies of Arcadia, or Auron of FFX, or Rikku of Kingdom Hearts. But a lot of the time they're giving me characters I don't even care about. I can at least know why I hate Ryudo, Elena, Millenia, Tio, and Roan in Grandia 2. In Grandia Xtreme I honestly don't even care about the cast. RPG character seem to be increasing bland. Not only aren't they making any efforts to make them good, there isn't even any effort to make them interesting, likeable, or even hateable.
Maybe the future of RPG isn't all just doom and gloom. FFX and Kingdom Hearts are certainly worthy to be compared to, if not better than any of the old nostalgia big names (Trigger, FF7, FF6, whatever). But right now I sure don't feel very excited to the new games coming out.</div>
I think the first problem is that a lot of RPG nowadays are 1-shot RPGs, like Xenogears or Skies of Arcadia. As much as I love these games, I really can't myself playing them again due to Xenogears's insanely long dialogue sequences and Skies of Arcadia's insanely long battle sequences (Xelos takes around 30 minutes to kill in airship form if you didn't have your energy charged on the round he's vulnerable to all attacks). It makes a great game something you don't want to play again and it makes a medicore game something you never finish. The biggest problem I've with recently RPG is that they're too long, and not necessarily in an absolute sense (though I think any RPG over 30 hours is too long, or it better be a VERY good one). There's just too much uninteresting stuff going on before something of interest happens. Take Grandia Xtreme I just brought (a big mistake!), after 2 of the ruins I'm not still even sure what the game is supposed to be about.
Directly related to the length of RPG is the length of battles. Battles in RPG are getting too long. Not only does loading times seem to simply increase, battles themselves tend to get longer due to animation time and whatnot. Back when games are simple, battles simply didn't last that long because there was no 30 second super attacks. I think we've come to realize that RPG battle system isn't going to be evolve beyond the old attack & heal-when-low tactics and yet
Music quality has also declined in RPG, because of the 'bigger is better' tendency, but more music isn't better music. In fact it's usually the opposite. Music provides a huge part in characterization and storytelling of RPGs. Take Schala of Chrono Trigger, who is the living example that music is greater than good characterization. At her core, Schala is a boring mysterious-damsel-in-distress-with-super-powers that almost RPG has. She doesn't even say very much. If she wasn't always associated with Schala's Theme and Chrono Corrodir (the theme of the floating world of Zeal), she would be, well, like the boring Schala of Chrono Cross that no one cares about. I've been looking at some Japanese polls and Chrono Corridor and Schala's theme are #2 and #8 on the fan list. Coincidence? Hardly. I was reading the fanfiction under the "Kid Stab Me!" club and even though I can't understand most of it, even looking at the adjectives used tells me that what they're writing about isn't the girl in the game. It's the girl in the song. Heck, I'm one of them too. In fact, Mistuda's liner on The Girl Who Stole a Star (Kid's theme) says that Kid is his favorite character and her theme is made that way to capture what the game did not. Bad music leads to bad character development. Back in the old days, musicians didn't have to crank out 100 tracks per game so the quality remained high.
Then there is also storytelling. RPG makers don't seem to grasp the idea that they're not good storytellers to begin with, and trans-temporal parallel dimensionism are better explained in a book than in a RPG. I don't expect every RPG to have unique, likeable characters, like Wakka. I don't even expect them to do the generic boring types really well, like anyone in Skies of Arcadia, or Auron of FFX, or Rikku of Kingdom Hearts. But a lot of the time they're giving me characters I don't even care about. I can at least know why I hate Ryudo, Elena, Millenia, Tio, and Roan in Grandia 2. In Grandia Xtreme I honestly don't even care about the cast. RPG character seem to be increasing bland. Not only aren't they making any efforts to make them good, there isn't even any effort to make them interesting, likeable, or even hateable.
Maybe the future of RPG isn't all just doom and gloom. FFX and Kingdom Hearts are certainly worthy to be compared to, if not better than any of the old nostalgia big names (Trigger, FF7, FF6, whatever). But right now I sure don't feel very excited to the new games coming out.</div>
