Those who know me will most likely know that I'm a fan of RPGs, Japanese ones in particular. Admittedly my interest is marginally less rabid than it used to be, but I still have a large interest in the genre. But, a couple that I've been playing through lately got me thinking. Just a short while ago, I finished Devil Survivor. Generally, games in the Shin Megami Tensei series are harder than most other RPGs, in my experience at least, with frequent difficulty spikes being the lesser of evils to worry about.
It's certainly more of a challenge than Final Fantasy, which seems to steadily get easier as time goes by. Best example I can think of is in X, where your party is healed for using a save point, which is located right outside an inn. Traditionally inns are used to heal your party, which means you can simply heal your party without the penalty of paying to use the inn. Not only that, save points littered throughout dungeons, so you're pretty safe.
Which is something that really gets to me, on the really nerdy levels, because I've always perceived an adventure as something where the characters put themselves at risk for the sake of saving the world. Now, with that previous example of Final Fantasy X, there's little to no risk. If I were to use the example of Shin Megami Tensei 3, where a boss appears towards the end of a dungeon right before a save point, then there's certainly some risk involved there. Both games are on PS2 and came out within a few years of each other, so it's a fair comparison to make.
But, this is beside the point really. Neither of these games are what I want to talk about. What I really want to mention is Phantasy Star 2, another JRPG that came out over a decade before those two. Thanks to the Mega Drive Collection on 360, I've revisited a lot of older games. Now, I've played it before via emulation, but I always find that anything I emulate is rarely seen through to completion. No point in getting my money's worth I suppose. But this time I'm determined to at least see the later stages of the game.
But you know what? It's already doing it's best to stop me before the midway point. Usually in JRPGs, if a section is difficult, you can simply train for a bit and return with stronger characters, but even that proves to be challenging at times, with my characters frequently getting wiped out, and with weapons and armour being priced incredibly highly, that simple boost is out of my reach quite often.
The thing is though, I'm finding it addictive. The simple notion of my characters being weak, being frequently defeated when I'm moving from one town to another, or dreading each and every encounter as I try to escape a dungeon with only one, injured party member keeps me coming back for more. So much more than being overpowered and facing no challenge. Certainly, it can be argued that RPGs are plot centric, but these are still games, and therefore have to be played to be experienced.
I do find it reassuring though that older games such as these can be easily played thanks to collections and emulation. At least that way no matter how advanced new technology gets, the things that made me take an interest in the first place will always be around. I'm not really sure if there was much point to this post beyond "older games are really tough" and "I like challenge", but it's just been on my mind for a while now. Writing this out has also made me consider a few other things along a similar vein, so chances are I'll have a few more introspective posts like this in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment