As I explained, the RPG genre is one that is story and decision driven. Now before anyone cheeky tries to ask what separates this from plain old Visual Novels, to be honest, it's not uncommon for those to overlap with each other. Off the top of my head, examples like the Rance series and Kamidori Alchemy Meister fit both genres. Visual Novels however are characterized mostly by the fact that they are stories, while RPGs are in fact actually games with some element of interactive mechanics as well as characters and a story to accompany them. The decision driven nature of RPGs causes the majority of them to be turn based battle strategy games of some sort. This isn't always the case however, as seen in games like Kingdom Hearts and Star Fox Command, where in addition to being decision and story driven, technical action oriented gameplay is also a large focus.
At any rate however, this blog post will mostly focus on turn based battle strategy RPGs given they are in fact the most common and well-recognized type of RPG in existence. Most of these games share the following common elements.
At any rate however, this blog post will mostly focus on turn based battle strategy RPGs given they are in fact the most common and well-recognized type of RPG in existence. Most of these games share the following common elements.
- Some kind of epic adventure (okay, a lot of games have that. RPGs however practically NEED this)
- An interactive overworld where characters travel from place to place, and where the player can interact with non-player characters and run into battle encounters
- Gradual acquisition of more important team members as the story progresses
- A combat system with rigidly defined rules and limitations
- Menu driven battle selections
- Character growth by winning experience from battles
- Varying levels of customization often via equipment or occasionally path decisions
Probably the easiest way to feel the significance of an RPG is by design, they typically are among the most time consuming of video games to play especially if tackled without assistance of any sort. A standard non-optimal playthrough of many such RPGs can take at least a good week or two of serious effort, or say 20-50 hours. If the game has actual replay value, then you can at minimum double that figure and imagine a dedicated player possibly spending a month or more beating such a game to death.
The time spent on RPGs at any rate depends on a variety of things which may differ either slightly or significantly from game to game. For instance, battles play a huge fundamental role in RPGs, and their execution naturally will affect the time players need to complete objectives. Certain games may make battles difficult to the point where the player is required to grind out the battle system for experience to properly prepare for a certain boss battle. Also annoying are older RPGs, particularly from the well known Final Fantasy series, where the most popular method of making plentiful battles available is making them randomly occurring as the player moves across the map, which also artificially increases game length by forcing the player into encounters that are not strictly necessary for completing the game. This is probably the least fun way RPG length can be extended. Thankfully, this trend seems to be increasingly less common in newer RPGs, and while the need to grind may vary from player to player and game to game, being able to pick and choose your fights regardless is important in allowing players increased control over the game and reducing unnecessary tedium.
Another time intensive element in RPGs is exploration. Because well, in every epic story, the hero has to travel to places abroad in order to do stuff presumably. Stuff not limited to and including saving innocent bystanders and looting monsters, dungeons, and homes. Yes, in many an RPG, one of the other fun things you get to do besides mindlessly killing monsters for experience and valuables is collecting treasures from the overworld in every town and dungeon you navigate. And typically you will have to travel to many such places, meaning the game developers have many opportunities to hide surprises here and there wherever you go. Whether or not the items are actually of any use is presumably up to the player to find out and experiment with, so especially if you are the type of person that is very thorough about knowing your game in and out, RPG exploration can become especially time consuming. It gets even better (or worse, depending on which variation of "time consuming" you prefer) depending on how many hidden passageways the developers want to sneak into their game. Being a completionist for such games is a true scavenger hunt. Especially if you're playing old SNES era 2D RPGs where many such treasures require you to find hidden passageways that are literally made invisible due to tall objects if you are not playing these games with graphic layer disabling on emulation.
So already, RPGs by default are clearly among the most time and effort intensive of all games due to the nature of decision driven gameplay leading to developers to focus more on a style of gaming where the player continually develops over time either as the story progresses or as a result of trecking through the battle system. Could it demand any more commitment? You better believe it if said RPG has competitive replay value. Let's take a look at Pokemon, probably the most well known of all competitively played RPGs. The thing that makes Pokemon competitive is the battle system and the fact it is multiplayer. Now what might you ask makes Pokemon actually a decent competitive game? Well to answer it simply, there is a lot of depth to the battle system. Depth to put that simply comes from how many customization options the characters have. Pokemon has a ridiculous amount of customization, both in the party members you acquire by catching Pokemon, the variety of battle commands you can have your Pokemon learn, and even the methods of stat training you choose for any particular Pokemon. Before I turn this into a blog post about Pokemon, returning to my original point about the time intensiveness about RPGs, let's just assume for a moment that 50 hours is a fairly "long" time for a serious first playthrough of many RPGs, and that figure may be at least doubled if the RPG has reasonable replay value. Now let's take a look at my Pokemon Diamond version, which has over 590 hours logged in. Besides the fact that this should evidently prove that I used to play Pokemon competitively, let me blow your mind and tell you this figure of 590 hours is actually misleadingly small, because this figure doesn't count the number of hours I spent restarting my game to recapture legendary Pokemon until I got them with the stats I wanted!
With all these things being said, I'm not necessarily trying to imply that RPGs are everything and that everybody should play them because they are universally amazing. As I've also stated earlier, RPGs often tend to share common design problems that ultimately conflict with having fun. To list a few:
The time spent on RPGs at any rate depends on a variety of things which may differ either slightly or significantly from game to game. For instance, battles play a huge fundamental role in RPGs, and their execution naturally will affect the time players need to complete objectives. Certain games may make battles difficult to the point where the player is required to grind out the battle system for experience to properly prepare for a certain boss battle. Also annoying are older RPGs, particularly from the well known Final Fantasy series, where the most popular method of making plentiful battles available is making them randomly occurring as the player moves across the map, which also artificially increases game length by forcing the player into encounters that are not strictly necessary for completing the game. This is probably the least fun way RPG length can be extended. Thankfully, this trend seems to be increasingly less common in newer RPGs, and while the need to grind may vary from player to player and game to game, being able to pick and choose your fights regardless is important in allowing players increased control over the game and reducing unnecessary tedium.
Another time intensive element in RPGs is exploration. Because well, in every epic story, the hero has to travel to places abroad in order to do stuff presumably. Stuff not limited to and including saving innocent bystanders and looting monsters, dungeons, and homes. Yes, in many an RPG, one of the other fun things you get to do besides mindlessly killing monsters for experience and valuables is collecting treasures from the overworld in every town and dungeon you navigate. And typically you will have to travel to many such places, meaning the game developers have many opportunities to hide surprises here and there wherever you go. Whether or not the items are actually of any use is presumably up to the player to find out and experiment with, so especially if you are the type of person that is very thorough about knowing your game in and out, RPG exploration can become especially time consuming. It gets even better (or worse, depending on which variation of "time consuming" you prefer) depending on how many hidden passageways the developers want to sneak into their game. Being a completionist for such games is a true scavenger hunt. Especially if you're playing old SNES era 2D RPGs where many such treasures require you to find hidden passageways that are literally made invisible due to tall objects if you are not playing these games with graphic layer disabling on emulation.
So already, RPGs by default are clearly among the most time and effort intensive of all games due to the nature of decision driven gameplay leading to developers to focus more on a style of gaming where the player continually develops over time either as the story progresses or as a result of trecking through the battle system. Could it demand any more commitment? You better believe it if said RPG has competitive replay value. Let's take a look at Pokemon, probably the most well known of all competitively played RPGs. The thing that makes Pokemon competitive is the battle system and the fact it is multiplayer. Now what might you ask makes Pokemon actually a decent competitive game? Well to answer it simply, there is a lot of depth to the battle system. Depth to put that simply comes from how many customization options the characters have. Pokemon has a ridiculous amount of customization, both in the party members you acquire by catching Pokemon, the variety of battle commands you can have your Pokemon learn, and even the methods of stat training you choose for any particular Pokemon. Before I turn this into a blog post about Pokemon, returning to my original point about the time intensiveness about RPGs, let's just assume for a moment that 50 hours is a fairly "long" time for a serious first playthrough of many RPGs, and that figure may be at least doubled if the RPG has reasonable replay value. Now let's take a look at my Pokemon Diamond version, which has over 590 hours logged in. Besides the fact that this should evidently prove that I used to play Pokemon competitively, let me blow your mind and tell you this figure of 590 hours is actually misleadingly small, because this figure doesn't count the number of hours I spent restarting my game to recapture legendary Pokemon until I got them with the stats I wanted!
With all these things being said, I'm not necessarily trying to imply that RPGs are everything and that everybody should play them because they are universally amazing. As I've also stated earlier, RPGs often tend to share common design problems that ultimately conflict with having fun. To list a few:
- The necessity of grinding, or repeatedly abusing a battle system to prepare for later challenges
- Random battle system constantly interfering with overworld movement
- The difficulty of creating a battle system that has depth and good customization, but is not hugely abuseable in-game and thus too easy
- Limited interactivity outside of menu-driven gameplay, which usually conflicts with action oriented gameplay
- Advanced battle mechanics that are either not explained very well, or at all
Now the good news is, a lot of these problems are actually becoming less and less of an issue over time. This is another reason why I believe RPGs especially deserve notice over other games, because over time, they are a genre that has constantly improved, unlike say...platformers, where some of the best platformers in existence like Super Mario Bros. 3 came out in the NES era (well, 3D platformers are a slightly different story, but this post is about RPGs). Regardless, some of the most popular RPGs are in fact older ones due to being revolutionary for their time. Look at stuff that Square Enix released for the Super Nintendo if you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 even today are very popular.
Now let's talk Final Fantasy 6 in particular, partly because I've recently played it. Final Fantasy 6 by its own right is one of the most amazing games in existence. Regarded by many as the best of the series for pretty good reasons, due to the characters, story, and having above average gameplay for its time. This game however embodies practically all the problems I bullet pointed. It is not a particularly easy game, and the battle mechanics are very complicated and only briefly covered in a specific location that the player has access to early in the game, and the menu navigation is both confusing and non-self explanatory. Now while the player probably does have to grind to some extent anyway to fight against various bosses reasonably, the random battle system is well...random, and ever prevalent in every important location you have to travel to, and the player doesn't have many options to really work around this especially early on. These independent problems do not solve each other. And remember when I complained about hidden passageways being hidden by tall objects that obstruct your view in a 2D environment? There's plenty of that in Final Fantasy 6, which is not helped by said random battle system interfering with exploration constantly. And while this game does have pretty high quality interactivity for an SNES RPG in a few events that require some time sensitive objective completion, well, you can't really compare that interactivity to Street Fighter, Super Mario World, Tetris Attack, and others. The game at its best is still mostly feels limited to its menu-driven roots.
Now for a slightly more contemporary RPG for the Gamecube such as Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, this game practically has none of the problems that I listed. It completely lacks a random encounter system, because all encounters are visible on the overworld and can be avoided with smart positioning, or better yet, the player has the option of entering battle with a free attack if you can ambush the enemy appropriately with an overworld action such as a hammer swing that could also be used to break blocks. Speaking of the overworld, many RPGs fail to actually make your characters able to do anything interesting while you travel the overworld. Not Paper Mario, where the game is both and RPG and a platformer, and you need party members to actually traverse formerly unpassable terrain. The player also does not really need to grind partly because of the lack of forced random encounters, and also because enemies are not made too artificially difficult for the player to handle with unfairly high base stats to overcome. Now probably the main somewhat valid criticism of this game is that the enemies at times are in fact too easy to defeat. You have to keep in mind this is because the battle system has a TON of depth and customization, AND action oriented interactivity where the player can deal more and receive less damage through a very wide variety of timing sensitive skilled inputs. So ultimately, the game is easier if you play it skillfully, which I feel should be the point of games in the first place. If you can play it skillfully, then a lot of your problems are solved. The battle system even is such that if you wanted to be a complete badass, a 0 damage run would be technically feasible. While this might be a hint that completing the game normally could be too easy for some, my point is this game does allow a very high skill cap. Besides, the game is already being more than just any old RPG where you point and click what you want to do on the menu and profit. The menu is also very very easy to navigate with easy to understand icons and detailed and precise descriptions accompanying all your options. This game is both user friendly and rewarding, the best possible combination.
In my opinion, RPGs will probably remain some of the most potentially attention grabbing games in existence. As a gamer, I look upon them fondly as a serious appeal to the avid gamer. A quality RPG to some extent I feel carries a statement like no other genre of games. I feel as if the developers demand greater expectations from both themselves and their fans when you consider the work put into these games on both ends. Finding and playing an RPG you enjoy is a real adventure, with a world to explore, opposition to overcome, and development that defines both who you and your characters truly are. It is an experience I would highly recommend for anyone with a lot of time on their hands.
