Written in 2024 by vio81
As with any good (RPG) campaign, this retrospective may start out small and innocuous, but quickly barrels out of control and we're en route to kill god and rescue the universe, ~fin~.
But before we go down that route, let's celebrate the tackiness of such dearly beloved, or ultra-kitschy RPG plots, find a selection of five titles which represent the clichés I've come to love or loathe over the years.
It is always a big ask for a title to step into the giant footsteps of a well-received spiritual predecessor, and in this case it is a SNES/Super Famicom legend - Chrono Trigger. Instead of time-travelling, CC focuses on the theme of parallel worlds, which the party has to navigate en route to multiple endings. 45 characters (more or less important to the plot), no random encounters, and an element system that dictates the flow of the battle system delivered an experience that felt fresh (or rather unusual) when compared to the other mainstay series from Squaresoft.
Always feeling like I missed out not giving it a fair chance, I finally got around playing it in 2012 - quite late, and not sure what to expect, though I was pleasently surprised to find myself enjoying it:
This game has nostalgia and melancholy written all over it,
though for me, the defining trait of this game is - warmth. Be it the setting, the party-members (some of them pretty flat for a faux-3D RPG) or the plot, the overarching feeling remaining a decade plus later is that everything is going to be OK.
The first new and original FF-title on a Nintendo console after FFVI, i.e. almost a decade later?
That surely had to be a big shot for SQEX, even if it wasn't the A-cast they put onto it:
Story/plot progression was structured into three dungeons per year, followed by a short recap of the year, rinse and repeat. Miasma streams take on different elementary attributes per year (basically gate-keeping later regions/dungeons), and each dungeon has a cool-down phase (to avoid farming, I guess).
Add to that an even-back-then-already-rare local multiplayer (up to four GBAs required for that), and you get a pretty unique ... Mana game. And boy did it feel like a Mana-game at many a turn - not just because of the definitely-not-Mana-Tree you have to collect three droplets from.
If you give the (nowadays almost inevitable) HD remaster a spin, you can appreciate how good some parts of it aged (and where it didn't keep up).
In short, you cannot say that SQEX didn't try hard with this one!
If there is a typical template for a JRPG plot, this game sure has it:
Starts in a typical RPG town, our adolescent hero wants to be an adventurer, goes on a Great Journey, fights epic boss (apparently Gaia, if the www can be trusted) and saves the world. Also, he seems to hook up with party member Feena, there's a Space Station (what???) and lots of adventures - all of which I have completely forgotten about, to be honest. So why am listing it anyway then? Because it manages to channel the feeling of adventure from the point of view of a 12-year old adolescent, and even if you've outgrown that age bracket a decade(plus) ago, this game feels like a light summer breeze compared to the angst-laden, overly-serious contemporary competitior RPGs back then (also has a few banging Iwadare tracks that still hold up well today). Not sure how it would hold up in the year 2024 if you've never played it, give it a honest shot.
A retrospective for the series, recalling a period that was beginning to be replaced by an influx of new gameplay-ideas, a change in the media-landscape (remember PlayOnline?) and a period where the series would change direction several times, or almost getting lost in the process. Plot is standard fare (kidnap princess, save the world), throw in a few continents, cardgame, and everything a proper FF needs: Moogles, Blackmages, crystals, et voilá.
In hindsight, it is in many aspects a precursor to the SQEX we know today, up to the Coca Cola commercial tie-in, heavily banking on nostalgia (just look at the success that FFXIV has), or polish of execution in seemingly minor details - e.g. the localization, which tried to portray different dialects in a clever way before fully voiced dubs became a thing. A love letter to old FFs that you should give a chance if you haven't played it already!
Last but not least - maybe one of the most original RPGs that Enix put on the market in their heyday:
Bucking the trend of going all in on 3D, this game opted for side-scrolling platforming with a faux-3D turn-based battle-system:
The titular Valkyrie and a few (more or less well-known) names from norse mythology form the core part of the cast of 24 characters, a chapter-based progression with fixed duration per chapter (which scales up slightly depending on the difficulty level) leads us through a mostly melancholic (or depressing) plot ... it's hard to put into words in how many aspects this game stands out from its peers at the time, it was _such_ a truly unique gem - until there was a part two (more on that later though!)
Time to take a rest around the campfire at the end of the day, and reflect on what we've covered so far:
Just five games in, and it is already a wild selection for "playing it safe", isn't it? Such was the lineup on offer back at the turn of the century, truly a golden time for games like we celebrate here.
Tune in next week when we visit ... the _future_.
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1999 - 2024 Florian Auer. Contents written by me CC-BY-SA 4.0. Details: Copyright / Impressum. Version 13.3
