Happy Monday Duders - Final Fantasy, Zelda, and The (short) Order 02/23/15

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I wasn’t incredibly informed as it related to video games when I was younger. In the late 80’s and early 90’s the only information that I had access to when it came to what new games were coming out were Sears catalogs and ads from Walmart or other chain stores until I stumbled across a Nintendo Power. I talked my mom into buying me one and I took it home and read it from cover to cover a couple of times over. As the years went on I started finding more and more magazines like Nintendo Power that were maybe a little more informative and helpful in my search for new gaming experiences. I started asking for games that were a little more complex than the ones that I had played when I was younger and eventually read about something that I hadn’t paid much attention to or even knew existed in the past; RPG’s.

The first that I played was Final Fantasy II, which was in reality, Final Fantasy IV but since the previous two entries in the series hadn’t been released in the US at that time it was considered the follow-up to the original. At first I had absolutely no clue what I was doing because I had never played anything like this but after seeing a short guide on how to play in an issue of Nintendo Power it all started to come together. After that, I fell in love with a whole new category of games that I still play to this very day and that’s what this blog is dedicated to, the genre that changed how I play games.

A lot of guys with spiky hair and kids in green tunics have graced my gaming library over the years and I’m going to talk about a few things that I played this past week while also giving a little insight into what I plan to play in the future. Thanks for reading this entire (hopefully you did) month where I talked about a few things that I love in gaming. Well, let us begin…

1. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D

THOUGHTS: I found this game to be extremely weird when I played it just after release and going back nearly fifteen years later that aspect of the game hasn’t changed at all. It is definitely the strangest entry in the console lifetime of Zelda but that doesn’t change the fact that it is still, in my opinion, one of the best. It took me nearly a week to learn the proper way to play the game in 2000, I didn’t realize that I needed to slow down time by playing the “Song of Time” backwards, or that you can skip ahead by playing it double, so I had a hard time adjusting at first. After I learned the right way to play the game to complete the dungeons and allow yourself the right amount of time to explore I was hooked.

The new 3DS version of the game goes a long way to improving your playing experience by explaining a couple of things a little better and giving you a much better way to track your quests and interactions with the people around Termina. I’m playing this with an original 3DS XL and not the new version with the C-Stick and I haven’t had any trouble in combat; Majora’s Mask plays exactly like the Ocarina remake on the 3DS from a few years ago which is definitely a good thing. The visuals are improved, obviously, from the N64 version and the 3D effect is excellent when you want to use it, which I rarely do with any 3DS game that I play.

VERDICT: This is one of my absolute favorite games in what is quite possibly my favorite video game franchise of all-time. I cannot recommend enough that it is a game that, even if you had trouble with it 15 years ago, you should go back and give another try or maybe a first try. Majora’s Mask was a risk, and a big one, by Nintendo who took one of their premiere series’ and did something experimental and cool with. A risk that I feel paid off big time.

2. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

THOUGHTS: I played this game when it released back in the early 2000’s on the original XBOX and really enjoyed it. I remember that my playthrough took me around 30 hours and I did a ton of the side-quests and thought that this was the Star Wars game that I had always wanted. The story was interesting and the ability to play the game evil or good was a cool mechanic that fits so well into that universe. Darth Malak was a great villain and the storyline with him and Revan is extremely interesting and complex.

VERDICT: I booted it back up last Friday after getting it in a recent Humble Bundle and played a couple of hours just to see if it holds up and while the graphics may not look as cool as I thought they were all those years ago the narrative and certain gameplay elements will immediately make you think about Mass Effect. It may be a little late to jump into this one because of the drawbacks of age but there’s an entire Mass Effect trilogy that is a great extension of what Bioware was able to create with KOTOR.

3. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

THOUGHTS: Final Fantasy: Tactics is one of my absolute favorite games in the entire Final Fantasy franchise and I always wanted to play this remake on the PSP but I never owned one.

Luckily (maybe) I bought a VITA!!!! I actually love handhelds and have turned my VITA into my JRPG device. I own a number of classic PS1 era RPG’s and have replayed many of them because of Sony’s embattled machine like Final Fantasy 7-10, Wild Arms, Suikoden 1-2, and Vagrant Story just to name a few.

Anyway, back on topic I've owned War of the Lions for a couple of years but never gave myself a chance to sit down and spend a little time with it to see how it holds up to the original and for the most part I really enjoyed the 3 hours I played last week. Even though it’s just a PSP game it looks great on the VITA and the combat still feels as good as I remember. The only issue that I could find is that the dialogue is a bit different; it isn’t bad just not what I remembered so I looked it up on GiantBomb.com and saw that it was rewritten in a more medieval style that is fine and some even say the translation is superior so while it threw me off a bit at first it isn’t necessarily a what I would call a drawback as I was able to adjust after a bit.

VERDICT: It’s a classic and the PSP version is totally playable, heck the PS1 iteration is still great, so I would recommend checking it out if you haven’t before.

THE WEEK AHEAD

As February draws to a close so does my theme of "things I fell in love with in gaming" so next week will be a return to me playing a bunch of random things and trying to knock off as much as possible from my backlog. Mediocre scores aside I would like to give The Order a shot but I don't have a copy and just can't bring myself to pay full price for it knowing what I get, (length has nothing to do with it) so I will hold off for a bit and will try to get to it by the end of the year, so for now I’m going to open Steam and see if there’s anything that I really need to play.

Also, I’m going to keep working on my Top 10 Favorite Games List and hopefully get it close to completion… I’m going to try to release it within the next couple of weeks and, for those of you that care, will give a firm date in the blog next week. Hopefully.

Here’s what I will try to play this week:

• Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
• Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. (Demo)
• Nuclear Throne(Again)

OPINION TIME

In lieu of the fervor that the length of The Order: 1886 caused I thought that I should throw my opinion on the topic of “how long a game should be” into the ring. I do not care how long a game is. I would rather play a game that I think is good with what it has than a game (like Alien: Isolation) that drags on too long and eventually just wears me down so much that I don’t want to complete it. There are a number of short games that I have played over the years that I think are fantastic; Braid is a great example of this, it is rather short, but it’s also a beautiful game that tells a simple story and entertained me thoroughly in the time that I spent with it.

I spoke above about how I can’t bring myself to spend 60 dollars on The Order because of what I’ll get for that amount of money but that has nothing to do with how long the game is. Everything I’ve read from reviews to Twitter interactions have discussed how boring and drab the game is. I do not care at all to pay full-price for any game as long as it is a good one. Enslaved was a game that I bought on release for a premium because I heard that it was a fantastic experience and I have no issues with that purchase but it seems that a number of others did because, well, nobody bought it.

While the length of a game doesn’t matter to me it obviously does to a number of consumers out there and while I don’t subscribe to that notion I do totally understand it. Sixty bucks is a lot of money when you have to worry about food, water, and bills in this day and age so plopping down a weeks’ worth of groceries for something that you will only get a few hours of enjoyment from is a tough proposition for many. If you decide that you only want to pay full-price for huge, 30-60 hour experiences then that is your prerogative. Do what makes you happy. However, just because a game is short does not mean it isn't worth the money that it asks for because I can still remember nearly everything I did in Bioshock Infinite but can barely remember anything about Dying Light, a game that’s twice as long, that I recently played that tried to pad its’ length. I do remember some dumb things that some zombie did though... they're really dumb.

Make decisions for yourself though because you are your own person and you are awesome no matter what!!!!

COMMENT REQUEST OF THE WEEK

Do you prefer Western RPG’s or JRPG’s today and how does that differ from your opinion on that 10 years or 15 years ago?

GO PLAY SOME GAMES

I kept trying to come up with a title for the conclusion and that was the best I could do.

Thanks so much for the continued support. I love seeing the views and comments on this blog every week and hope that I can keep entertaining those of you who check it out every Monday.

So let’s keep this thing alive.

Please comment and add to the discussion. I love interacting with all of you and I really appreciate the positivity that I’ve seen in the comments. Thank you all so much and have an incredibly Happy Monday Duders!!!!

I really enjoyed reading this blog. I don't spend a huge amount of time on the forums these days, which is probably why I've missed your entries up until now. I've thrown a follow your way to make sure I don't miss any future ones, and I hope a few other duders do the same. This is an awesome little set-up you've got here.

All three of the games you've focused on are games that are in my own personal backlog, and all three have very similar stories behind them - namely that I played significant chunks of them, then got side-tracked by other titles and never went back. Reading this has really got me wanting to go back to Majora's Mask and see if I can finally press on beyond the section with the Zoras. Final Fantasy Tactics has become one of my biggest personal gaming white whales at this point, I'm not sure I'll ever chase it down and beat it, but damn it, I'm going to try.

To answer your Comment Request of the Week: my relationship with both Japanese and Western RPGs has really changed in the last decade and a half. Fifteen years ago I was deep in the Pokémon craze that was sweeping the UK at the time, and I guess you could call it my 'gateway JRPG', because from there I made the logical progression to the Final Fantasy series. I spent a big chunk of my adolescence playing Japanese RPGs and very little else, but fell out of love with the genre around the time I turned eighteen and started gravitating towards Western-developed RPGs like Morrowind and Fallout 3 instead. These days I seem to be striking a much more reasonable balance between east and west when choosing RPGs to play (for instance, I've just finished re-playing the original Kingdom Hearts, and have moved onto Alpha Protocol). I've come to realise that they both scratch different kinds of itch for me, and there's plenty of room for both on my games shelf. Now if only there were enough time to play them all...

Thanks so much. I really enjoy writing it and seeing that people are actually reading it and commenting on it at a decent rate every week is what gives me the motivation to write it on Monday's when I usually have zero desire to do anything.

Majora's Mask on the 3DS is fantastic. It's a better version than the original because it takes care of some small issues I had back in the day with quest tracking and some of the other things I mentioned so now is the time to jump in if you have a 3DS. Also, play Tactics... it is amazing and the original PS1 version is available as a PS1 Classic on PSN for like 6 bucks if you don't have a VITA or PSP; if you do, then definitely play the War of the Lions. I put some more time into it today and it became even more apparent how much of an upgrade it is over the original.

Thanks for answering... I have much of the same experience as you. I played a ton of JRPG's during the PS1 era, Pokemon, etc. then moved on to Western RPG's in the mid-2000's with Oblivion and Mass Effect but over the last 3-5 years I have played both but have focused more on JRPG's. I've played a lot of the Tales series, with Tales of Xillia being my favorite, and I highly recommend those.

You mentioned Alpha Protocol. I bought it on Steam and couple of months ago and plan to get to it soon. I always wanted to play it but never had the time, unfortunately, I just started playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on my 3DS and will have very little time for anything else. I'm already hooked and it's my first MH game ever.

Good blog! I really like what you've been bringing to the forums around here lately; namely, positivity and some cool insights about video games.

In regards to your question, I've had a strange history with RPGs, both Japanese and Western-style. I've played both a lot throughout my life, but lately I've found myself gravitating towards the Japanese style. Being a kid growing up in a certain era, I was enamored with the Pokemon games and played them religiously for years; them being my first RPG experiences. Obviously, I was young so I don't remember all the thoughts I had regarding them, but needless to say I thought they were pretty neat. I think the main part was exploring a small but dense world and having an explicit journey that I was following. I loved entering new towns and hearing the new music that came with each one and seeing all the dumb NPCs with inane chatter.

After that, my experience shifted immensely when I became addicted to Runescape for a few years in elementary school. I played that game far too much and honestly I don't really know what I liked so much about it. I never became very high-level and I didn't enjoy the combat or anything. 80% of my time was spent grinding on monsters, or grinding my mining/smithing level, or grinding something else. Part of it at the start was that my friends played and we'd hang out, but even after they quit I just stayed on and spent hours doing nothing. That was a pretty bad time in my life when I was being bullied and other such bad things so I guess that had a lot to do it.

After that, I went a long time without playing any RPGs at all. I tried to get into a couple, both Western and Japanese, but never found them hooking me. I played Fallout 3 and loved it for about 15 hours, before just losing interest. Same thing happened to me in Skyrim. Once I had seen most of the world, I just became bored with fighting things and collecting items. Nothing really progressed me forward. Then I discovered Persona 4 through this site and it blew my god damn mind. Not only was the battle system immediately engaging to me, but the Pokemon-esque aspects of collecting monsters and leveling up your party and getting skills appealed to my love for those old games. Probably the main thing, though, was the more rigid structure. There is room for exploration, but for the most part you are on a singular journey with one objective, and almost everything is supporting that goal. I found that way more appealing than the open-endedness of Western RPGs.

On top of that, there is something to be said for the relatively smaller scope of Japanese RPGs. A huge (maybe dumb) thing that I love about JRPGs is the specificity of the music tracks. Each track corresponds to a certain area or tone, and that really helps ground me in the world. Those tracks become so evocative of the different areas that just hearing them will make you remember exactly how you felt when you first went there. This is true of battle-music as well, where just hearing the battle-music of Persona 4 puts me right back in that mode. In Western RPGs, this aspect is not as stressed with ambient music and radio-stuff (like in Fallout) taking the fore. But I feel like the music changing for each town makes me feel more like I'm exploring and discovering a world or area than in Western RPGs when I just get a little notification marker. It makes each place seem more unique, and so I can look back at the end and remember all the areas I went to and how they supported my journey, and the way it felt to be in them. A great example of this that I'm playing right now is Earthbound. Every area (and even NPC) in that game had so much care put into it that it makes your journey feel incredibly unique and powerful, even if unlike WRPGs, you are having basically the same experience as everyone else.

There's something to be said about a very specific tailored experience, and that's why I think I gravitate toward JRPGs more than WRPGs. Sorry for the long post, but this is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently while playing through Earthbound and trying to understand why I love it so god damn much.

Man those are three pretty weighty games to tackle in one week. You didn't beat them all this week did you? because if you did , holy cow is that impressive.

KoTOR was one I really wish I got to play at the time, I tried to get into last year and man it's just really hard to go back. I could tell why it's so beloved though!

Do you prefer Western RPG’s or JRPG’s today and how does that differ from your opinion on that 10 years or 15 years ago?

Personally I've tried to break myself out of that mindset because I've come to think it's inaccurate. Mini rant incoming, just hear me out. :)

I mean we don't talk about Japanese Platformers and Western Platformers right? Or Japanese action games and Western ones right? So why make an artificial divide in RPGs? Yes there are some Cultural differences in story telling which are perhaps more noticeable in a genre with a heavy narrative component, but is that really a worthwhile distinction to make?

I think what that shorthand really meant back in the day was Console style RPGs (played with a controller) and Computer style RPGs (mouse & keyboard). It just so happened that Gens 4-6 the console market was largely dominated by Japanese companies and the PC market by US and European ones. So they seemed more distinct than perhaps than they really were, because naturally being on different platforms with different input methods they were going to play pretty differently. And people, myself include, made the perhaps unfair association that one was a "Japanese" style and the other a "Western" one.

These days the lines are blurred to the point of not even mattering anymore and I think dispels the illusion about the "JRPG" conceit. Final Fantasy is on Steam and Bioware games are now primarily designed for the controller in the mind. And I think personally the games play much more similarly now than they did 15 years ago as a result. Although that change is that Computer RPGs have become more console like (barring the occassional throwback like Divinity) than vice versa.

In any event I still prefer Console style RPGs although I like both styles, because I prefer playing long games with a controller. As a result of tech changes I am playing more Western developed RPGs than I ever had, simply because there are more of them being made in the Console style. But pretty much if it plays well, has a compelling setting, maybe has nice production value and definitely has a compelling story/characters I'll play it. I don't care if it's Japanese or Western company making the game. I mean of course I have favorite creators, but I don't like them because of some regional quirks.

I will say I do think the Japanese RPg makers had a big tech/creative lead on their Western counterparts in the 90's they no longer have. But I don't think that's Japanese losing steam as the common narrative goes, as much as it is Western companies (especially European ones) really improving theirs.

If you told me in 2000 that most anticipated 2015 RPG release would be made by a Polish developer, I would have likely laughed in your face.

So yes I still love Final Fantasy, but now I also I have The Witcher to love too.

Anyway, That was probably not the sort of answer you are looking for, but I hope it makes sense.

@slag: I do agree with you on the naming convention of JRPGs and WRPGs might be getting a bit outdated, but I disagree with the idea that they do not represent largely different styles of games. Some of the differences I mentioned in the post above yours, but I think the main thing is the linearity. There are linear Western-made RPGS, and there are more non-linear JRPGs (which is why I agree the nationality-based naming convention is silly), but for the most part the styles are different in almost every way apart from the RPG-staples of leveling up, upgrading weapons, battle-systems, etc. Honestly it might even be reasonable to just call them linear-RPGs vs non-linear-RPGs but even that's dumb. Something we have come to accept is that game genres are dumb and impossible to define, and even changing them to something slightly more reasonable doesn't change much in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, calling them WRPGs and JRPGs is silly and makes it seem like Western developers can't create linear RPGs and Japanese developers can't make non-linear ones, which is just pigeonholing developers, but I do think there is still a distinction.

I haven't actually played many modern RPGs so maybe I'm hilariously out-of-date, but I don't think grouping something like Final Fantasy XIII into the same genre as Fallout 3 makes a lot of sense. Then again, lumping basically everything else into action-adventure or shooter is equally weird. I guess the conclusion I've come to is that game genres are silly and make no sense and even by having this discussion we are talking ourselves around in circles! Oh well. Dunno if the tone comes through properly but this isn't meant to start any sort of argument, just trying to join you in this strange ride of making sense of video game genres.

@supermike6:

I get what you are saying. No worries duder, I don't take it as argumentative at all! I hope I also don't sound argumentative, because I certainly don't mean to if I do.

Personally I agree that Open World vs Linear is definitely a very useful distinction and descriptor. If you were to purpose making a split based on that distinction, I could buy that. But as you pointed out that isn't a country of origin specific choice.

A recent example of this would be Costume Quest or Child of Light. Both pretty Linear Turn Based RPGs made by Western developers (DoubleFine and Ubisoft). Then on the other side of things you have Dragon's Dogma, A Capcom developed open world Action RPG.

so to me what it really boils down to is this, the main difference between "JRPGs" and "WRPGs" is nothing mechanical on a fundamental level. Rather the difference is primarily in the Veneer of the game, whether that's the setting, character design, music and storytelling style. All very important parts of the experience no doubt. And when you see somebody talk about preferring one or the other, they usually make some reference to that aspect of the experience.

But game genre naming convention as far as I know has always been delineated by mechanics. In that respect I think Fallout and Final Fantasy are more similar than dissimilar. Definitely different ends of the spectrum but still recognizably RPGs.

Admittedly it's tough today to draw hard distinctions since many games tend to cross pollinate mechanics across genres (e.g. Borderlands, What is that? a FPS or an RPG or both?)

But Here's something else to consider , the GB wiki has no mention of JRPG or WRPG. I think there's a good reason for that. I don't think the "JRPG" conceit holds up the more you look at it, because while Japanese and Western developers may tend to have different preferences for different mechanical styling (say perhaps like how you handle saving) they are still using recognizably the same basic foundation.

@slag: The more I think about it, the more I am agreeing with you on this case. Definitely, mechanically these games all share more features than they differ in. And both are based on very similar concepts. The first JRPGs (I am using this term simply now to denote that they come from Japan, for the sake of this discussion) were based on old Western PC-RPGs like Wizardry. Over the years, different cultures took these same concepts (obviously originally hearkening back as early as DnD) and ran with them in completely different ways. But that doesn't mean they are different genres. Simply that they are two things of similar form conveying entirely different experiences based on the culture they were created in.

Because of this, I actually think the JRPG and WRPG are useful classifications for games, despite not being "genres" per se. While for modern games I'm not sure this makes sense; in terms of classifying old games it is the best way to avoid homogenizing what are entirely different types of games. I view it more akin to denoting the difference between French pop and American pop, or maybe Japanese literature vs Russian literature. Yes, these are the same medium, even the same genre, but the cultures they were created from have a profound effect on how they are made and what they turn out to be. A lot of Japanese rock is based on the same American/British classic rock roots from the 60s and 70s, but what they took from those sources, and what they changed about them is what makes modern Japanese rock and modern American rock different, even when they are working in ostensibly the same genre.

Both Western-developed RPGs and Japanese-developed RPGs have taken influences from the same places. The most obvious is DnD, but I think PC point-and-click adventure games also played a big role in shaping what those genres are today. But Japanese-developed RPGs were also influenced by the traditional stories from Japanese culture, as well as more modern trends like anime and manga. Meanwhile, Western-developed RPGs (You can also argue that this can be split into North-American and European, and then even that into Western-European and Eastern-European, but we will not go into that right now :P) are obviously influenced by Western tales of fantasy and war movies.

But then, there are examples like you mentioned (Dragon's Dogma, also Dark Souls (Is that an RPG?? Action-RPG??? Who knows??!??)) of Japanese-developed games that are obviously influenced by traditional Western ideas of fantasy, and even the open-ended game-design that gave classic PC games their identity. Where do these fit into anything? Do they have to? They are a twisted fusion of a fusion that can now not be categorized by anything I have already stated.

This all begs the question of what constitutes genre and what doesn't. All mediums have the trouble of categorizing themselves into genre; just look at the 900 different types of metal as described by Wikipedia. These splits are based on very specific aspects of the music that maybe doesn't matter so much. On the other hand, despite us living in what is a global world, our country (and by extension its culture) heavily influences our values and what we appreciate/create in art. Some people like things that come from their country. Some people like things that come from others, or a mix of both. I like Japanese RPGs in the same way that I would say I enjoy Japanese books. Japanese books are still written words placed in sentences and chapters just like all others, but there's a style that comes from the country (and all countries, for that matter) that makes them discernible from others. They are not a different genre, but it's a different style that is important to recognize in order to avoid homogenization of cultures and therefore ideas.

I feel like I have maybe gone on too long and maybe derailed poor @jbg4's blog :P. Basically this was a very long response that boils down to me saying "Yes, I agree, also here's a bunch of vaguely-related things from my head." Oh well.

@slag: @supermike6: No, nobody is derailing anything. I'm so giddy right now because this is exactly what I wanted from this blog... I wanted discussion and positivity and I'm getting both of those things from you guys. You aren't arguing you are discussing a topic and I love it. By all means keep going but I'm going to throw my opinion in now...

I wish I could have beaten all three but I only completed Majora's Mask last week, I had beaten both of the others when they released and wanted to jump back in to see how they hold up, both of them surprised me because they are totally playable and enjoyable still today.

Anyway, I think there is an obvious aesthetic difference between JRPG's and WRPG's and as someone who played a ton of RPG's on the SNES and PS1 when I jumped into something like Daggerfall I thought I was playing a completely new game, I wasn't even sure it was an RPG. I was uninformed at the time and it wasn't until years later when I learned that there were RPG's from the west and the east.

I think we still use that distinction because while there are tons of similarities as @slag mentioned you can see the differences in everything from the box art to the color palette used within. It is more of a visual difference on the outside but when you start playing a game in either you immediately see that they're extremely similar in design, whether it be communicating with NPC's or undertaking quests. So while I will admit that we may not even need this classification anymore I am an old man, haha... and have now been referring to them in this way for 20 years now so get off my lawn. Keep this discussion going if you guys like though... you two said everything perfectly so there wasn't much left for me to add.

Also, @supermike6 you discussed the music in a JRPG and I could not agree with you more. When I play a classic on my VITA now I put in headphones (not just to drown out my daughter) but so I can hear the music. I love how they use it to convey every single emotion, ie. the sheer terror when you see an entire village burning to the ground while Sephiroth stands in the center of it all. I love video game music but I would say that 15 of my 20 favorite tracks are from JRPG's.