A Good Novel

The inimitable Jane Austen once wrote that ‘the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid’. Being a fan of books in general, I have always considered this to be one of the truest statements ever made by man. Given that JRPGs are, in essence, interactive books, it should therefore come as no surprise that I like them. Their popularity in the west is, unfortunately, more of a recent phenomenon. Suffering from bad translations and even worse PR, the JRPG has only recently received due recognition by an English speaking audience. This particular post has been churning in my brain for days now, due to the fact that I have been working on a joint post with a non-Japanese-speaking friend of mine who is much newer to the genre than I am. The game that we were working on, which will remain nameless due to spoilers, was one of the plethora of JRPGs that was released for the Super Famicom in Japan back in the nineties. When most people hear about Super Famicom RPGs, they think of grand adventures like Final Fantasy VI or quirky cult classics like Mother 2. Rare it is that you think of SNES + RPG = bad. All that I can say is that it actually happens with as much frequency as any other genre, and it got me to thinking about JRPGs in general. What would have happened if that game had been the first JRPG that I had ever played? Would it have been the last? After coming to the conclusion that I have way too much free time on my hands, I decided to write my thoughts down, if only to give myself some peace.

Given the experience that I had with the previously mentioned mystery game, not to mention several of the bad games that I have canvassed for this blog, it wouldn’t surprise me at all that some people would wonder why I love this genre far above all others. I suppose that I love RPGs mainly because they combine two things that are very dear to my heart: reading and winning. Of course there is never enough winning to be had for my taste, but I think that that is a complaint that every gamer would make. Having discussed this particular character flaw of mine in detail in the post The Same Old Grind, I won’t go into it here again. If I’m awake, I need to be distracted, and RPGs are very good at forcing you to organize your thoughts in order to propel your way to that elusive win. Add in a bit of micromanagement without it being tedious, and you can keep my constantly churning brain busy for hours. Perhaps I just enjoy the busywork.

When asked by a friend of mine what I considered to be the ingredients to make a good RPG, my first response was likable characters, both playable and otherwise. As some of you may have noticed in previous posts, I can’t click with a game that doesn’t give me a reason to want to play it. A solid battle system comes in a close second with me. Bells and whistles are nice, but we’re talking about a good RPG, not a great one. A tricked out battle system can quickly devolve into something really irritating. Final Fantasy VIII comes quickly to mind as a game that I would have loved if the battle system had not been so very annoying. Give the likable characters an interesting path to follow in a world that seems alive and you have a good RPG by my standards. Greatness, of course, requires more than this. If you want an example, go play Chrono Trigger instead of reading this nonsense.

My love for the JRPG has been canvassed lightly here, if only to clear my head. I could spend hours rambling on about the sense of majesty created by a truly great game, how games as recent as Ni No Kuni and Tales of Xillia 2 have brought me to tears, but that would be a waste of space. Instead I’ll refer once again to my shelves of games, some twenty years old, a few twenty days. Much like novels, there are the classics, the exciting current bestsellers, and more random games than I could ever remember the stories to. Unfortunately, there are those special few games that, much like the Twilight series, I most fervently wish had never been made. But I keep all of them together in one room, in as safe a condition as is possible, in order to always know that I have the comfort of an adventure close at hand. Be they good, bad, or indifferent, JRPGs are an integral part of my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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