Boring Tedious Repetition in RPGs

by WeX Majors

(A little note: I played FF8 while attempting to not level up for the first 2 and a half discs so a good portion of the repetition is brought on by myself, however most of it is present in the game no matter what so the Argument is still valid.)

I have just finished playing Final Fantasy VIII(Best excuse for the title that there is.) Since the beginning of February I’ve dedicate 2-3, sometimes 4 hours every Saturday and Sunday to attempting to finally beat this game. After looking back on the game diary that I keep for all RPG’s (that includes the place I last saved and interesting things I did.) I discovered that at least once every weekend I would mutter this line: "All this for one damn card/weapon/easier boss fight etc. etc." which would inevitably make me not want to play it for another week. So even though killing the X-ATM092 would result in a sweet explosion and 50 AP to boot, the process to get that involved at least 10 tries to do it right. Sure that fight was an option and was meant to be hard but I would go through the same thing with trivial things like card rules, acquiring rare cards, drawing magic from a boss, and other such asinine things that would make me want to through the controller through the screen. The problem is simple: This situation has become the norm. I believe everyone would agree with me that FF8 is tedious but that it isn’t the only culprit. FF7’s materia system could drive you batty and Star Ocean 2’s refining system was nothing but sheer torture.

Does Square think that this is mandatory? I think they do. Three examples from their recent past pop in my mind: FFVII, VIII, and Parasite Eve all involve a system that requires many tries before you get the desired result. In FF7 it’s the materia system. FFVIII has the entire card game and the drawing system. Parasite Eve is even notorious for it’s systems like inventory and even the fights themselves for seeming like they’re working against you rather than with you.

Square isn’t the only culprit either. As I’ve mentioned, Star Ocean 2 is a must-play game with a great story and even greater battle system. But the ability to refine a bunch of common items into a kick-ass gun, for example, not only has a really low success rate, but there’s a good chance you’ll have to use another skill just to figure out if it worked or not! Grandia 2 although I haven’t begun to play yet, has a system not to far from SO2 which really makes me wince in anticipation.

But by far the worst examples of repetition are found in nearly every single RPG: The world map. Every gamer out there already knows what I’m talking about. Nothing like trying to cross a path between two mountains and getting to the first town while fighting invisible enemies every step. Yea FF7 is bad so you would have figured Square fixed in FF8? Well we all know how they attempted to fix it: “Let’s put roads on the ground where enemies fight them every 5 steps! We’ll even give them cars to lure them into a false sense of security!” So what did this modern day Einstein work on before FF8? Every other RPG“But in FF7, they gave you a materia to get rid of it and FF8 had Enc-None!” Yes, but how many times have you needed that materia/ability slot for something far more important. Even Skies of Arcadia, an extremely fast-paced game, (got it at Christmas, beat it by the end of January) is marred by a super slow ship while fighting a group of enemies every few steps. But the reason why this gets me isn’t because they might kill me, but because they're always there.. By the end of FF7, 8, SO2, and SoA I was so powerful that I could blink and kill them, yet they wouldn’t go away even though there was no reason for me to fight these wimps.

So exactly how are we supposed to prevent these problems? Well enemies on the world map have been greatly reduced in many new RPG’s and even give you the option of sneaking around ‘em completely (like Grandia II.) But this still doesn’t make sense. Let’s use FF8 as the example. If monsters have been raining down from the sky for decades don’t you think somebody would have invented a repellent for these buggers by now? If we every day Joe can go to Wal-Mart and buy Bug-Off or whatever, don’t you think that SeeD’s, the apparent SWAT team of that world would have Bite Bug repellent? That’s the other thing: I’ll fight every Ruby Dragon, Marlboro, and other big nasty hippies you throw at me but if I see a bunch of Fastiocalons or Bite Bugs, I’m not wasting my time.

What about things like refining and mini games like Triple Triad? Well the refine system was perfectly fine in FF8 so why not use that but have the guy in the junk shop(or whatever the equivalent is in the game) give a not so honest estimate on the parts you need and be able to buy them at slightly higher prices of course. Then through magazines or other methods be able to say “No I need this, this and that and I’ll need two extra of these.” The Triple Triad problem was a fairly simple one to solve. Think about, if you use your absolute best cards all the time why would the person with only one good card use it say, every 5 battles? And if you’re going to include trade rules and other things have that nature in your mini-game, why not be able sit down with your opponent and say “We’ll use blah, blah, blah and play with the blah ,blah and blah rules” which is very much like they do in the Pokemon cartoon BTW. You can even do like FF7 does with the Chocobos except instead of being able to rent a chocobo or buy greens and junk, be able to rent a deck of cards or buy some moderately good cards.

So to boil it down into simple and easy viewing, here’s a list of what should happen in an ideal RPG:

- Not only should enemies be reduced on the world map, they should have the ability to be distracted, snuck behind, and outright scared of your party once your strong enough.
- Be able to completely repel the easy enemies at the very beginning if you desire.
- If you have a refining system for weapons items etc. Have stores do the entire process for you, even if you have none of the required items. It should cost a bundle to do it though.
- Have less then honorable shop owners who overcharge you and even make you think you need parts that don’t even exist let alone belong in your super-sword.
- Why does my Waldenbooks sell Magic: The Gathering cards, and yet the Esthar book shop doesn’t sell TT decks?
- On that note, why is there no Wal-Mart type store in RPGs? I’d love to go into one store and buy a sword, fuel for my car, and a fireball scroll all in one trip.
- Have gathering spots where everyone goes to play your mini-game. You’ll both pick the rules you want and it’s pretty much guaranteed that both of you will use the best cards/chocobos/etc.
- And finally one last little thing: If actions figures come out for this game, guarantee that they’ll have the basic and ultimate weapon. Plus do more stuff then my Squall figure can.

That’ll be all to this little rant. If anyone else out there spent two hours getting one card, drop me a line so I don’t feel like a complete geek ;)