CONTINUATION TO: Tradition, Tradition: On Turn-Based Battles and Job Classes
One of the most charming draws of traditional RPGs is the inherent difficulty they present. Early RPGs were harsh, unforgiving, and unpredictable, much like a psychotic significant other. And yet we love them anyway. The exhilaration, the challenge, and even the frustration, all lend themselves to a heady, addicting experience. In many early RPGs, difficult bosses couldn't be defeated simply by leveling up a great deal. No, you had to use skill, intelligence, and just a smidgen of luck to win.
Enter the job system. By giving your party members different jobs, you can build a customized, well-oiled fighting machine. In its simplest manifestation, the job system changes an individual in your party from a generic fighter to a specialist. Usually, different jobs utilize different armor and weapons, and have individualized stat bonuses associated with them. For instance, a thief will have higher agility than a knight, but a knight will have higher defense. Mages will have low defense, but high intelligence.
So, what does this mean? And why is it great? What it means is that, in a game where your party members can freely change jobs, you can uber-specialize. You can turn generic character A into a death-dealing nightmare by leveling him up as a knight, berserker, ninja, and dragoon, successively. Watch him deal 9999 damage with each hit. Or you could transform generic character B into the most powerful wizard in the universe by running him through the white mage, black mage, red mage, blue mage, sage, geomancer, and summoner job classes. In effect, throughout the course of the game, you affect the direction of your characters' growth in ways that you specify. If you want a party that always strikes first, you can run them all through jobs that raise agility. If you want a team of tanks, you can do that as well.
This is important because, as I stated above, not all bosses can be defeated by leveling up. There are some bosses that will destroy a level 99 team that has not been crafted carefully and used judiciously. These bosses are usually found in optional dungeons at the end of the game, and drop ultra rare, powerful items. And if you want those ultra rare, powerful items, you're going to have to build your team up with care and attention to detail.
There, I said it. This sort of old-school love I'm talking about is specifically geared toward a certain type of player. See, I like being in control of every aspect of my characters' growth. I enjoy micromanaging where their stat boosts go. I don't want to leave that up to the game, I want to do that myself. Staring at menus? That's for me.
Job systems get even better in their various iterations. Final Fantasy V is a great example of this. By leveling up a character in one job class, you gain the ability to transfer their skills into other jobs. So, for example, you could have a berserker who casts white magic or a ninja who can summon. The party construction possibilities increase astronomically with this one simple addition. And, again, you'll have to think carefully about party construction in order to defeat some of the later bosses. An unbalanced party can force you to level grind for hours in order to raise job levels to the point where your party has the necessary skills to defeat a boss.
Maybe this isn't for you. Maybe you don't want to fuss with things like that. Maybe you feel RPGs have grown "beyond" these conventions. Maybe you should take a look at some upcoming games. Old-school tradition in general and the job system in particular are far from dead. Etrian Odyssey features nine different jobs from which you can select to build your team. Blue Dragon, another upcoming turn-based RPG, also features nine different job classes. The SRPG genre is chock-full of job systems. This focus on traditional elements is not exactly going away.
The fact is, RPGs come in a variety for this specific reason. There will always be people like me, people who want a return to the roots of RPGs. And there will always be people who'd rather not fuss with micromanaging stats, or who are bored by turn-based battles. With the plethora of companies developing RPGs, all parties should be able to find something to satisfy them. So whether you agree or disagree with me, we can all have something to play.
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