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*What is this game? I've never seen anything like this before*
Of course some people, the more experienced of the gamers knew what it was about. It was another title in the long running and successful Square series, Final Fantasy, whose previous games could be found on the Nes and SNES. It was the return of one of the most successful franchises in gaming history and it's debut on a 32 bit system. Newer and older gamers alike were excited about this great game that was coming to their system and they couldn't wait. A huge marketing campaign followed and Final Fantasy 7 turned out to be one of the most successful games ever to be released on the PSX and some people still proclaim it to be the best PSX ever released. Of course alot of people returned it as well as they weren't used to the battle system and complicated plot but still this was the start of a whole barrage of RPG's to hit the system. Older SNES games got sequels on the PSX such as the Breath Of Fire series, Star Ocean and Dragon Warrior (the most successful RPG series in Japan) and also new series of RPG's were released such as Vandal Hearts, Suikoden (both of which were released before FF7 but only got noticed after FF7 came out) and Wild Arms. It seemed as if the western market, which was widely believed not to be interested in the RPG genre started to realise how good these sort of games were. Most games got sequels and the FF series regularly topped the top of the charts. However with the dawn of the PS2 things changed.
Now we arrive in the 21st century and the era of the next generation consoles, however in the transition from PSX to PS2 something seems to have been lost along the way, the RPG genre. Where exactly are all the games? So far all we've had is Ephemrial Fantasia, Legaia 2, FFX and Wild Arms 3 that can be classed fully as RPG's. (might be some more but can't think of them right now) I don't include games such as Kingdom Hearts as they aren't fully RPG's, they're more live action hack and slash games with RPG overtones. There's been news of games like Breath Of Fire 5 but they're taking their sweet time to come out and we all know about the fiasco that is Suikoden 3. Suddenly one of the most successful genres in the PSX era *doesn't make enough money to constitute a release in Europe* Have i missed something while playing my favourite genre's games? When was the time these games suddenly became unsuccessful? FFX made alot of money and arguably it wasn't even that good when compared to previous titles in the series so why aren't some of these games getting released over here in good old Europe?
It could be the same story of great games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears that never got released on the PSX and the reason that was given was that the games wouldn't make enough money at that time. However shortly after that the games started coming back with FF8 and Suikoden 2 to name just a couple. Is this just history repeating itself and in time we'll start to get a steady flow of RPG's again? Maybe Wild Arms 3 is the start of it who knows? but the only thing i want to know is - Where have all the RPG's gone? and if anyone finds them please contact me. Thank You
Saga Frontier 2
Guardian Crusade
Parasite Eve 2.
Happy now? Going to stop degenerating my topic into an argument now?
The thing is those PS1 titles came at various times throughout a 7 year life span. A number of them have been released since the birth of the PS2, so effectively they are 'current' RPGs that just lack next-gen graphics.
And that might have something to do with it. FFX and so on have really raised the bar in terms of what an RPG has to provide. Unless a company has the budget to make a game that wouldn't look out of place in the cinema they probably don't see it as a worthwhile endeavour.
> Discussion mate, discussion.
Sorry my bad it just seemed at the start you seemed to be arguing for the sake of it. My mistake again sorry.
I honestly couldn't think of a time when
> RPGs were more abundant than these days.
That's your view and i accept that. Mine however is that i don't see that many traditional RPG's anymore and i don't include stuff like Kingdom Hearts in that. I've stated all the traditional RPG's i can think of for the PS2 there probably is some more but i can't think of them and really the only decent ones have been Wild Arms 3 and FFX in my view
>
> The thing is those PS1 titles came at various times throughout a 7
> year life span. A number of them have been released since the birth of
> the PS2, so effectively they are 'current' RPGs that just lack
> next-gen graphics.
Only 3 of the ones i stated were released while the PS2 has been out and those were FF4-6 which i've replaced. However i do accept that they were spread out over the years, not 7 years but more 5 years or so, but you at least got one every 2 months or so. We don't get that now, it seems we get one every half a year or so.
>
> And that might have something to do with it. FFX and so on have really
> raised the bar in terms of what an RPG has to provide.
FF7 raised the bar for what RPG's had to offer yet there was still plenty of them after that got released.
Unless a
> company has the budget to make a game that wouldn't look out of place
> in the cinema they probably don't see it as a worthwhile endeavour.
But why isn't that true for other genres though? There's plenty of FPS yet hardly any of them look like movies and that goes for almost all the genres. Why should the RPG genre be any different?
>
> Sorry my bad it just seemed at the start you seemed to be arguing for
> the sake of it. My mistake again sorry.
Let me put that in english lol.
Sorry my bad it just seemed at the start you were arguing for the sake of it. My mistake again sorry.
If a game with the A/V standards set by FF7 was released today it wouldn't be accepted. And I'm not knocking it (still my fave game of all time) but it takes more these days.
> Actually, I bet if you were to go and play FF7 again you'd be shocked.
> It just doesn't compare anymore - plus the translation was pretty
> ropey back then.
>
> If a game with the A/V standards set by FF7 was released today it
> wouldn't be accepted. And I'm not knocking it (still my fave game of
> all time) but it takes more these days.
How can you compare a game released on a technically inferior system 6 or so years ago to anything today? Games are always evolving. My point was at the time it set standards for what RPG's should follow just like FFX did when that was released.
Anywho i played FF7 a couple months back and i still i loved it. Sure, if you were to look up pop-up in the dictionary a picture of FF7's world map would be there but the plot and characters are still as great as i found them back in '97
We always end up with half of a series or a bad PAL transfer, a lot of the pretty good RPGs that are released go unnoticed becasue Mr Casual gamer wants to play Fifa instead.
> We always end up with half of a series or a bad PAL transfer, a lot of
> the pretty good RPGs that are released go unnoticed becasue Mr Casual
> gamer wants to play Fifa instead.
Well said.
*Reclines*
I know, I know.
*Falls over*
Oh, crap