Boring Tedious Repetition in Editorials

by TSG

An asinine title, maybe, but nonetheless somewhat fitting. Yes, I'm allowed to be stuck up because I'm English and thusly have my nose firmly stuck in a cup of tea and have to take my RPGs when I can get them. All of you with your 'old' and 'new' new-fangled type school things, tch! I remember when we had to crawl over a mountain of sports games to reach an RPG! In the freezing cold! With no breakfast!

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Anyways. Away we go, standard e-mail format, quote then reply. This editorial contains severe silliness, occasional ranting, and Language. Not swearing per se, but lookit all the words!

I have just finished playing Final Fantasy VIII (Best excuse for the title that there is.)

Technically speaking, the title would be more appropriate if you'd just beaten it for the third time, but hey.

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.

I recommend having Selphie use the Super-secret 'Hotwire' command. Works every time. That, or get Grubb to Repair it and watch it blow up.

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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.

If they were optional, you have very little reason to complain - you could, gasp, /not do them/ - while it's a rather radical idea, it works very well indeed. A few months back, I took a trip to America and returned with a big stack of games, launching into FF9 first. After quickly wanting to complete it fast to play the other games, I burned through the main story, caring little for sidequests. And it was Fun. They're optional for a reason, that reason being that they're often tedious / require a lot of effort. If you don't want to summon the energy, then play the main quest only. Or Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, maybe.

Drawing magic, there you have a point. However, you could skip the drawing sequence by finding the draw points. While they did take a while to reset it wasn't that long - I have fond memories of flying between three points in the game with the Ragnarok, because they had the three Ultima stock points. Once you could reach the Islands of Heaven/Hell there was little need to ever draw again.

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.

We'll come back to these when you mention them below, but I would make the point that two Square games and a game with squidloads of stats isn't exactly a full and fair representation of the norm.

Does Square think that this is mandatory?

Second knock against your statement above: Square alone is /not/ the norm. What about Atlus, Namco, Sony, Capcom, Enix, Konami, Nintendo, Taito...

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.

That doesn't require many tries per se - it just requires experience building, which is something present in practically every contempory RPG. As an example to your point, it's not a good one.

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.

Because of course, fights always work for you. I mean, in a bar brawl, you can always ask the guy hitting you to please kindly stop kneeing you because you'd like your go now thank you very much. Needless sarcasm, maybe, but expecting something hostile and with sharp pointy teeth to sit by and let you have the advantage is a tad naive.

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!

While you have a point, I'd like to see you easily manufacture a working gun from a pile of scrap metal and not have to second-guess how well it works a couple of times. In SO2, if you didn't know what you were doing it would take a long time to get a piece of machinery or artwork or cooking or /whatever/ correct - rather realistic, really, and rather against your point - boring tedium it may have been to your viewpoint but it was simultaneously a very innovative and original idea.

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.

Critical error, an uninformed statement. Grandia 2's skills system is quite unlike Star Ocean 2's - rather than personal totals there are general totals, usable on whoever you wish. If you don't up your SO2 skills you won't get some statups and points toward side skills and non-vital combat skills - if you don't up your Grandia 2 skills you have no spells and no special moves. Don't make a statement about a game you haven't played.

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.

Yup. A massive case of repetition, that, so astounding it didn't even need to be in Koudelka, the Saga Frontier games, Valkyrie Profile, the Parasite Eve games, Vagrant Story, Persona 2, Grandia, Grandia 2... see where I'm going with this? All of those games had either no world map or no enemies on the world map. I won't even start on PC RPGs. Besides, what are the characters meant to do without a World Map, exactly? Stumble around blind?

Yea FF7 is bad so you would have figured Square fixed in FF8?

...uh... um... yes?

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!"

You were unlucky. I could happily wander across half the continent without battles, especially on roads.

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.

Given the number of slots it's possible to have, having to give up one for a while isn't much of a disability, particularly nearing the end of FF7 where it's perfectly possible to have over 40 materia slots. Besides, running around an RPG and not gaining experience tends to lead to the Horrible Messy Character Death materia.

Secondly, how many materia slots do you tend to fill with battle-related materia? I'd bet it's more than one... so if you're not going to fight any battles, unequip it all. Instant masses of space.

Even Skies of Arcadia, an extremely fast-paced game, (got it at Christmas, beat it by the end of January)

Pah. That's not fast paced. Not sleeping and beating it in about 4 days is fast paced.

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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 after equipping No Encounter materia, calling the bunny and going above the cloud level where there's no fights they kept coming? Those're some pretty tough enemies. Critical Hit to the game code, I think. In every game you've cited there's a way to stop enemies attacking you late-game, particularly on the world map. Simply because you didn't use them doesn't mean you can say they weren't there.

So exactly how are we supposed to prevent these problems?

The ways I... and you... cited above would be a good start. And end, too.

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?

Well, they have. They're called swords, and they're pointy. Very pointy.

If we every day Joe

Actually, I'm Alan. But nice try.

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?

See above, they do. Also remember (spoilers ahead) that SeeD was never designed to fight monsters, only the Sorceress. From this, remember that conventional weapons, say tear gas, bullets, that sort of thing, simply would not work against such a powerful enemy. Other options, maybe hand to hand combat, was the only key. And they remained trained that way.

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.

See above again, the ways to avoid monsters. And I'll have you know my housemate is not nasty. However big and hippy-like he may be.

What about things like refining and mini games like Triple Triad?

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Again, there's a simple answer - /don't play them/. The FF8 card system did, as I recall, have absolutely no effect in-game, while the refining was useful, but not necessary - you could get perfectly powerful enough weapons and armour (in SO2, not FF8) through the normal course of the game.

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

With replies from your friendly non-neighborhood Englishman, of course.

- 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.

Suikoden and Suikoden 2 come to mind instantly - the 'Drive Off' command was an extremely helpful one throughout the game. Skies of Arcadia has enemies liberally running away, Final Fantasy 7 and 8 have No Encounter abilities, SO2 has Come On Bunny, Final Fantasy 9 has Flee, and practically every RPG in existence has an accessory that reduces the number of encounters. Not counting those that increase pre-emptive attacks, or reduce back attacks...

Be able to completely repel the easy enemies at the very beginning if you desire.

And consequently die through total lack of experience. Fun RPG. I mean, do you /really/ want to fight Sephiroth at level 5?

- 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.

Final Fantasy 9 had quite expensive synthesis shops. And a refining shop where you don't have to give them any items is just another type of shop.

- 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.

They're too scared. You have a sword the size of their entire body, they're not going to argue or lie. Besides, while it might lessen tedium it'd most certainly increase the annoyance factor. (And if you never found out he overcharged you, it'd be just like any other refinery.)

- Why does my Waldenbooks sell Magic: The Gathering cards, and yet the Esthar book shop doesn’t sell TT decks?

That's a scary, scary thought. And as I recall you could purchase Tetra Master cards in FF9.

- 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.

There were General Stores in SO2, but to be realistic, a Wal-mart in real life would be like having a forge, an alchemist's lab and a scrap metal pile all in one place in a fantasy setting. Not the most likely combination to occur in one house.

- 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.

Where's the challenge? If you always choose the rules you want, and the best cards for that situation, then you're losing all the challenge, and conequently it becomes even more tedious because there's no difficulty or problem. Dealing with diversity is a virtue.

- 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.

Mmm, the sweet sweet smell of marketables. Personally I find the best way to pose your model anyway you want is to be creative with a hacksaw and modelling glue.

Really, while I don't mean to be quite so sarcastic, I feel you're approaching this the wrong way. Rather than bitching about side quests, simply don't do them. Rather than returning to areas near the start of the game, continue the plot line and go to new areas as soon as possible. Rather than bitching about constantly having fights, use the items and abilities provided to avoid them. There are ways around everything you're unhappy about - if you don't use them, then it's not really fair to blame them for your woes.

Finally, don't be bitchy about repetition in RPGs - there are many different types out there. Final Fantasy is very different to Summoner is very different to Parasite Eve is very different to Vandal Hearts is very different to Dark Cloud is very different to Tales of Destiny... and so it goes on. Be thankful that every RPG is not a faceless mould of the others. Be thankful that companies are making more and more steps towards strange new systems. And be thankful you actually get some /released/ in your country. Jeez.

And trust me about the pointy swords.

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Original Editorial: Boring Tedious Repetition in RPGs