Chasing the RPG Dragon

[declaration]

Does anyone else feel like me?

I spend time reading about RPGs and talking about RPGs, but little time actually playing them. I constantly yearn to lose myself in a fantasy world like I would in my youth. But when I actually try games out, it never feels the same as it used to.

I am too impatient for most J-RPGs these days, I hate random battles when once I would defended them to the grave. The storylines are unbelievably cliched, and the dialogue is usually embarrassingly bad. There are exceptions, of course. The Persona series for example, but generally I am left disappointed.

I now seem to prefer Western stype RPGs where the focus is on exploration. If I want character development, I'll read a book or watch a film.

And yet, having said all this, and without being too dramatic, I still regularly feel like I am missing something...

[Dincrest]

I think we're all stuck in that rut.  And there are a glut of titles that play on feelings of nostalgia but seem a bit empty.  There was a time when we were lucky to get 1-3 RPGs a year and now we get at least that many a month if not more.  Maybe we're burnt out on them and are still waiting for that one silver bullet title that will completely shatter everything and knock us (the gaming community as a whole) on our asses the way FF7 did.  But we still keep seeking out that RPG holy grail, fighting through the burnout, because we see so much unrealized potential in the genre. 

I address this some in one of my editorials.  http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2009/640.html

[Kstar]

I totally hear you on this.  I've noticed that games that have appeared on this generation's consoles just aren't holding my attention like games of the past.  I feel like some of the magic is missing, I've tried so hard to find a game that totally captures me like the good old days when I was pounding out RPG after RPG.  Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to get into Western RPGs, although with the lack of JRPGs, I've been more willing to give them a shot than I would have previously.  I do agree that something is missing lately - that extra spark, that extra push, perhaps, we've just been exposed to so much that nothing feels new or different anymore.  Or maybe it's the older we get the less tolerant we are of more of the same.

[declaration]

Every other genre seems to have changed and improved so much, but the J-RPG of today is pretty much the J-RPG of the 16 bit era but with shiny graphics.

I am longing for a Oblivion/Fallout style open world and game mechanics blended with J-RPG art direction, story telling, and character development.

That, to me, would be the perfect game.

[declaration]

I think we're all stuck in that rut.  And there are a glut of titles that play on feelings of nostalgia but seem a bit empty.  There was a time when we were lucky to get 1-3 RPGs a year and now we get at least that many a month if not more.  Maybe we're burnt out on them and are still waiting for that one silver bullet title that will completely shatter everything and knock us (the gaming community as a whole) on our asses the way FF7 did.  But we still keep seeking out that RPG holy grail, fighting through the burnout, because we see so much unrealized potential in the genre. 

I address this some in one of my editorials.  http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2009/640.html

Thanks for the link, I enjoyed that.

And I still need to check Anachronox out.

[Sagacious-T]

Dincrest did you seriously fucking plug Anachronox again hahaha

[MeshGearFox]

Does anyone else feel like me?

No.

Just kidding. For me it doesn't just apply to RPGs, though. I spend more time thinking about doing things that actually doing them for anything, really, and it's maddening and I hate it and I have no idea how to do anything about it.

In terms of games though I started getting burnt out on JRPGs like a year or so ago. Well, gaming in general. I didn't game much at all during fall 2009. Actually, I didn't do much of anything during fall 2009 but that was a very, very terrible semester soooo...

I think the problem with JRPGs in particular is that they don't give you a lot of room to figure out things for yourself, for the most part, and every problem tends to have the same solution. That's why I got bored with Grandia 2 really fast, for instance. It's totally linear, there's no room for choice at all, and every battle plays out the same way. I have ADD or something. I need options. I need to be able to make decisions. I need a lot of things to play around with.

[insertnamehere]

I've rarely felt like that at all, though I'm way still mostly catching up to this current generation
maybe you should stick to games you love and know that are really good, and focus on getting games that have unanimously good reviews.
also, rpg dragon?

[Tooker]

I'm not sure if you're serious or not, so I'm going to assume you're serious.

It's a play on the phrase "chasing the dragon," which refers to doing drugs (I'd only heard it in reference to heroin, but Wikipedia says it's about others too), plus the fact that many RPGs include dragons. :)

[Dincrest]

Drug reference?  Whoa dude, I took "Chasing the Dragon" as something like "chasing the ghost of a good thing."  I just looked it up on wiki, and "chasing the dragon" is a Chinese slang for smoking drugs. 

[Starmongoose]

Yeah, I picked up on the drug reference, found it rather funny.

After I finished the backlog of all the good games I wanted to play, maybe then I felt like I wasn't enjoying the new games enough.
But if I were to go through the games I played in order, with appropriate gaps between releases, I probably wouldn't find a decent game I like very often either.

[Prime Mover]

I feel like my favorite game sessions come in spurts, with all the best titles coming in at around the same time. I'm not sure if that's because they are inexplicably my favorites, or whether they become my favorites because I'm feeling great at the time. Assassins Creed II and Mass Effect II were probably my favorite games of the last few years, and I played them back to back. 2006-7 was amazing because I played Okami, Zelda: TP, and Tales of the Abyss back to back, and those are 3 of my favorite games ever. Now I'm buzzing on Metroid: Other M and Fallout 3: New Vegas, which come out around the same time.

Does anyone else feel like all their favorite games are clumped around the same periods of time? Sometimes you just feel like, "Wow, I'm on a roll!"

[Tooker]

Absolutely - and other times, you're like "Why don't I have anything to play?  I was just swamped a while ago!"

[Kevadu]

I have such a backlog of games to play this really isn't even an issue for me.  Even if there's nothing new that I want to play there are always plenty of older games that I still haven't played...

[Vanguard]

This is pretty much the reason why I stopped playing video games. They're too expensive and time-consuming to not feel satisfied for the investment. That being said, I am still quite fond of handhelds and every time I visit my parents' house I dig my old SP out of a box and play Final Fantasy or Metroid.