RPGs of today compared to the Old School RPGs

[Kal]

I'd say hell no, they'll never get as good as old school like FF6 and Chrono Trigger.

[Laggy]

for me RPGs were great when they were a way to get your mind off life, go into another world that has nothing to do with your own, these days RPGs remind me of life, and that isnt what Im playing for.

[Lancet Jades]

Since it's been almost 9 years, let's revive this discussion and compare RPGs today with those made circa 2005, and then with the really "old-school" RPGs from the 90s (and possibly even 80s).

Contrary to Raist's thoughts, I still feel that constantly increasing graphical quality has not been kind to console RPGs as a whole, although I haven't played a great variety of console RPGs this past gen (even though there were plenty to play). One of the major ones was Tales of Vesperia, which didn't use realistic graphics and was all the better for it, in my opinion. And I still find myself going back to older systems for RPGs, especially the PS2 (not so much PS1 anymore, although that's more due to not getting the emulator up and running well on my newer computer). RPGs on handhelds seem to have prospered, but I also haven't played a huge number of those, either. Not that I don't like RPGs as much anymore, but I play a greater variety of genres now compared to a decade ago, so less overall time is devoted to RPGs.

EDIT: Having slept on it, I guess the modrn graphics aren't that much of a burden on a lot of RPGs, since they rarely go for truly cutting-edge graphics. Games like Dark Souls make a good compromise that utilize the graphical capability of that gen without focusing too much on graphics. I guess I'm just an old, crotchety man about my older games, dag nabbit!

[Don Chipotle]

Does Nier count as an RPG?


Because if it does, Nier is the best RPG in at least a decade.

I assume this topic is only talking about JRPGs and not WRPGs, because apart from, like, The Witcher, WRPGs are kind of not a thing anymore.

I've recently been playing through Xenogears, as ya'll already know, and it's probably good that I didn't play it back in the day because holy fuck is that game a lot of bullshit. I haven't played a lot of RPGs in recent years (I mean holy shit how many fucking Atelier games can there be? Fuck that stuff) but the ones that I have played have been pretty mediocre, and the graphics didn't really contribute to that. A game can have graphics like Vesperia and still be a shit game. In fact, that game is called Tales of Xillia. Boom.

For me, I guess it's a matter of RPGs not really evolving past the graphical level. I get fed up with a lot of presentation in JRPGs. Tales of Xillia just felt like more of the same, because it fucking was. The same style of humor. The same stock character types. The same themes as the other Tales games. It just felt like a hollow experience overall.

The fact that Bravely Default is so highly regarded baffles me. Bravely Default is fine for, like, the first few hours but god fucking damn they ruin everything that game has going for it, which is mostly at the mechanical level because it isn't on a story or character level. Bravely Default is a game that wanted to give players an old school JRPG with new school innovations, the best being the ability to set encounter rates and speed up random battles. But in their whole 'Let's make an old school RPG' they went too far and made it absolutely fucking tedious in the end. It had great ideas but the package on the whole suffers for their old school design mentality.

There's a case to be made for older RPGs, but I wouldn't say that older ones are better. And I blame Final Fantasy 10 for ruining everything. Fuck that game!

Show me an RPG that is on the level of Nier. Trick question, you can't. That game is GOAT.

[Lancet Jades]

Originally Posted by Snapplecrack

because apart from, like, The Witcher, WRPGs are kind of not a thing anymore.

What do you mean by that?

Originally Posted by Snapplecrack

For me, I guess it's a matter of RPGs not really evolving past the graphical level. I get fed up with a lot of presentation in JRPGs. Tales of Xillia just felt like more of the same, because it fucking was. The same style of humor. The same stock character types. The same themes as the other Tales games. It just felt like a hollow experience overall.

This might just be true. I haven't played as many RPGs this past gen as in previous gens, and when I have played RPGs, it's usually been lesser-known or niche RPGs. In fact, all RPG games I can see I've played are: Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Two Worlds (ugh), Operation Darkness, Zoids Assault, Divinity II (Ego Draconis and Dragon Knight Saga), Taes of Vesperia, Dark Souls 1 and 2, and Demon's Souls. My list for the gen before (PS2 and Gamecube) is about 3x as long, if not more, with dozens more I haven't played that interest me more than the onesI didn't play on 360, PS3, or Wii. But part of that might be due to how much simpler the PS2 gen was; no DLC, no system accounts, no achievements, none of that. Just the console, a wired controller, a memory card, and a pocketful of dreams.

[Don Chipotle]

Originally Posted by Lancet Jades

What do you mean by that?

The WRPG isn't really as prevalent these days as in days gone by. The days of Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout 2, those sorts of games. The Witcher is the closest thing around. These days WRPGs get associated with shit like Skyrim.

[Yvlla]

Almost every Western game is usually an RPG to some extent nowadays, so there's less reason to make a game that's exclusively an RPG anymore.

[Don Chipotle]

Almost every Western game has RPG elements in it, that's a subtle difference.

[BrK]

I was born in the new era and yet I still go back to playing the old school games. None of this new shit interests me much. The music, the trends, the memes, the movies etc

I think I was born too late.

[Hikari Tsukishiro]

It hurts to play any high intensity game nowadays on my arms, I have been mainly playing gacha games.
But I love retro games, but I love the quality of life improvements in new games that old games lack. Auto save, advance text, increase speed. etc