Nester’s RPG Reflections, Part IV: But… the Future Refused to Change

Am I being a little hard on JRPGs, or am I simply misunderstanding them? Or perhaps their struggles in recent years reflect the feelings I had about them 10 years ago. I discuss my misgivings with Japanese RPGs, as well as my fallout with them, in the next part of my reflections:

However, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that it was a game I had played before. Random battles, turn-based combat, a rigid, linear story. I figured that a lot of the foundations of RPGs were born out of necessity for the limitations of home consoles, but technology was pretty good by this time, and it seemed to me that that should have freed things up a bit. Yet, aside from the updated graphics and sound, it still felt like an SNES game. I had skipped an entire generation of RPGs; shouldn’t they have progressed a little more than this?

Apologies to Wildcat, since he may not like everything I have to say in this one.

Check out the full article at my blog, Lark’s Island: RPG Reflections, Part IV: But… the Future Refused to Change