The Decline of Rpg's

by Clint McKibben

I do believe that RPG's of present day are in a state of decline. Final Fantasy VII and VIII are great sellers, that's now doubt, but should they set the trend for oncoming games? I do not believe so. If RPG giants concentrated as much on the story line as on the graphics then they could stay in the same league as the older ones.

Older games have been argued to be the 'best' rpg ever(i.e. ff3 & 6) and they didn't even have impressive graphics. When I first played ff6 my parents litterally had to threaten to ground me to get me off of the super nintendo. I wasn't exactly drooling over the graphics, but the storyline more than made up for it. The main part of the storyline was the medieval style. FF6 wasn't exactly medieval, but the characters didn't have complicated method's for learning magic and raising stat levels.

Suikoden is a prime example for a game that wasn't given the right push. If a company such as Squaresoft had come up with Suikoden...it would be considered by rpg gamers to be 'the best there is'. In that game, you didn't have to worry about finding hidden weapons or battling extremely difficult bosses to obtain the best weapons, all you had to do is have a blacksmith with the right skill level temper your sword or weapon.

The replayability on newer rpg's isn't very high in my mind. My father now has my copy of ff6 and has beaten it hundreds of times...and never gets tired of it. I've only played all the way through ff7 three or four times because it's just the same thing. FF6 had so many different characters that if you were getting bored of a person...you can just toss him out and replace him. Also, reuniting of characters after the destruction of the continents is really cool. Each character has a quest that you must go on in order to reobtain that character.

I may have not convinced some of you of my point, but in the minds of many, older rpg's will always rule until the gaming industries step back and notice what was right about them. If they observe what made the older games so great and integrated the eye-popping graphics that square is known for, then there will be a new set of RPG's that everyone will remember forever.