Written in 2024 by vio81

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Curtain Call

True, that was a bit mean:

Leaving you sitting there, probably wondering "What the hell is a Seraphic Gate, and what is the TRUE endboss then?"

Well, the true endboss for all of us is ...
(fanfare)

... of course, our BACKLOG!

BONUS-Stage #1: The Backlog

And who hasn't got a _huge_ backlog nowadays?

docower: *raises hands
Oh, that's answered some paragraphs below. Just ignore me, then.

Currently there are too many games being released every day, week, month or year, even if we feel like there's hardly enough to play for us - it's just that we simply do not have enough time to play all games at least an hour to figure out if we like it or not (totally ignoring the fact that a few games don't even get into the swing of things in the first hour, but that's another problem for another time) ... However: just pointing at that pile of shame and shaking it off isn't how we are doing things around here, right?

Alas, let me summon the Jury!

PIERRE: The defendant is charged with "Premeditated Ignorance and deliberate back-logging of potentially great (J)RPGs."

CHANCELLOR: Whereupon these roleplaying games got pushed back even further for an as-of-yet unknown date where they will be given a fair chance of proving themselves. If that wasn't criminal neglect, I don't know WHAT is!

CHANCELLOR: And I have facts that throw the defendant's character into question!

PIERRE: The issue here is MOTIVE. Was there any motive for this fine citizen to stash RPGs on a backlog?

Yours Truly: Guess it's time to I'll explain myself then: Since we do not want to sit around Till the End Of Time, let's just focus on the cream of the crop, the ones from current/last gen that make up the tip of the iceberg:

• Kingdom Hearts III: Guess I hate myself sometimes - but for twelve bucks, gotta give it a fair chance, right?
• Star Ocean 6: really dug the demo, but then put it on the backlog for when I feel like I need a tri-Ace fix - because there aren't that much being released since Star Ocean 5...
• Valkyrie Profile 3: that managed to look like crap on the Playstation 4, which is an impressive feat if you consider how good the first and second looked. On the PS5, that should be fixed now, I guess?
• Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana: everyone of the friends who has played it told me that I SHALL give it a shot already, so... guess I have to, eh?
• Trials of Mana: I guess ... i have installed it... probably?
• Sakura Wars: Look, it's a western release and it has robots, so why wouldn't y–––
• Final Fantasy XV: Who'd have thought that out of three titles releasing in close succession (WATCH_DOGS 2, Last Guardian and FFXV), the Ubisoft product would prevail over SQEX and Sony's best?
• FFXVI: Somehow didn't catch me fully yet, and then .... there was already the FF7R#2 release, which I am currently playing and enjoying.
• Star Ocean The Second Story: errrr ... kinda want to plead the fifth here!
• Stellar Blade: A Nier Automata-clone from South Korea? THEY MADE ME BUY IT, what can–

JUDGE: Order in the court, order in the court! A verdict has been reached. The verdict is solitary confinement as punishment, so you better get off your beautiful bottom and start playing to discover the few gems in your piles of shame!

BONUS-Stage #2: The Oddballs

Speaking of piles:

So you are saying that you are an orderly person and literally have zero games on your backlog, and no RPGs lined up that pique your interest?

docower: Is it considered backlog when you just don't buy the games but still yearn after them? hmm...

.... that ... sounds highly hypothetical, just sayin' ... but still, no need to hang up the controller and call it quits - the beloved devs who put out many great RPGs also tried their hands at other genres, so it is easy to find a list of five wildy varying genres to inspire you to dig deeper (... before you will come back for the RPGs, of course):

1. tri-Ace:
   Best known for Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile and even got their own page in this special - so of course I would feature them, right. However: if you thought that tri-Ace helping out with FF13-2 and FF13-3 was wild, check out Silent Scope: Bone Eater (Arcade), a rail-shooter with anime-plot - a shame that it is arcade only, but youtube got you covered with some wild gameplay.
2. Game Arts:
   Well known to us for Grandia - just try to extrapolate what else would you try doing then: Bomberman Generation, Silpheed, an Urusai Yatsura-Game ... yes, not joking, that's a _wild_ lineup!
3. Cavia:
   Had a short life before it got sold, but their output during that short period is wild, to say the least... Resident Evil, Dragon Ball, Naruto, Tetris, Bullet Witch (Yesss indeed), Suzumiya Haruhi and Nier Gestalt/Replicant, their swan song - but the highlight has to be Sega Bass Fishing (Wii) and the Korg DS synthesizer software for the Nintendo DS, which i used to create some rocking chiptunes back then!
4. Atlus:
   Well known for Persona, but how about DoDonPachi, Snowboard Kids, Trauma Center or Etrian Odyssey ... or, if you never got the chance to play Kwirk on the original Game Boy, give it a spin in an emulator of your choice!
5. SquareEnix:
   You wouldn't have expected me to forget about them, right? Their back-catalogue is so, so full of stuff, it's hard to pick out the weirdest ones: Look no further than the first Squaresoft game I've ever played, which was Rad Racer on the NES! Then there's Front Mission, Einhänder, Ehrgeiz, Chocobo Racing, Wrestling Games, and two of my favourite outliers, Driving Emotion Type-S (a Gran Turismo Wanna-Be Contender) and The Bouncer (a Brawler/Beat'em Up-ish Action game with one of the more ridiculous plot-twists) ... and that's just Squaresoft, before they merged with Enix. If nothing else, give The Bouncer a shot. Seriously. Trust me!

BONUS-Stage #3: The Ones who got away

And last but not least - since this has been a bit of a personal therapy session for this author as well - what games are "the ones who got away", the titles where I still feel like I missed out?

(a long, long GURU MEDITATION later)

That has been surprisingly hard, much to my own surprise! But still, finally managed to assemble a final list of five titles that I've somehow missed out on:

1. Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter (PS2)
   The soundtrack of Hitoshi Sakimoto got me hooked, and The save-point concept was a bit unusual back then, but nowadays piques my interest way more than it did back in the early 2000s!
2. Code Age Commanders (PS2)
   One of the SQEX titles that never made it to US or European shores, meaning you had to import the NTSC-version if you wanted to have a chance to play it. Key personnel of the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles team worked on this action game, which sports an unusual Sci-Fi setting, multiple playable characters, a multimedia-brand-building exercise (that fell on its face pretty quickly), and best of all, had Kumi Tanioka working on the FFCC soundtrack (plus a pop song penned by Kou Shibasaki, which was somewhat famous back then). Without the necessary language skills/being able to understand the plot though, was hoping that SQEX might bring it over ... let's hope that some day in the far, far future, it might happen.
3. Magna Carta (PS2)
   A korean RPG on the PS2? Yes, that was long before the Hallyu-Wave would start to spread around the world ... and as it turns out, I would be playing the successor even before I managed to find the PS2 title for an acceptable price (yes, that was a long long time ago!)... didn't have enough time back then to pick it up, but plan to do so, soon(ish) ... for a decade now, huh.
4. Eternal Sonata (X360/PS3)
   tri-Ace, Motoi Sakuraba, Chopin as an anime character/party member - what else do you (that is: I) need? The time to play it, of course ... and if you've paid close attention, it is one out of three tri-Ace titles I have left on my backlog, so chances are high(er) that I will get around to it eventually!
5. Final Fantasy XIII-3
   Speaking of tri-Ace and getting around to it - both statements apply for this title as well: What piques my interest first and foremost here is how much of the tri-Ace input can be felt in a mainline FF-series title ... currently I am still planning to finish FF13 and 13-2 first, but with the time it takes me to finish a RPG, this may take a few more years...

And with that retrospective crossed off the bucket list, it is time to conclude our short trip through 25 years of RPGs. Admittedly, this might have read like a somewhat random list at times, but with each part of this article, we've tried to cover different aspects of what may make (or break) a game for you, dear reader.

And, above all, we hope it was also a good chance for you to re-evaluate what RPGs in general, and some of the titles specificaly may mean to you, what you can recall most about them, or even just to realize if they faded away into memory.

In any case, there should be enough for us all to cover the next 25 years ...

~FIN~

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Back to batch 5

Back to the 25 years start page.