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As a child, I did not have the experience of playing too many RPGs on my Gameboy. After eight years, I gave away my Gameboy Color to my boyfriend's sister, and was given a crimson colored Nintendo DS for Christmas by my parents. Since then, I've been hooked. There have been so many interesting and unique games that have come out for the DS, and have utilized the capabilities of the touch screen. Games like Cooking Mama, the Ace Attorney series, and Trauma: Center: Under the Knife have all shown what the DS has to offer in fun and innovative games and concepts.
But there's something that bothers me about the DS in relation to its wide variety of RPGs: are touch screen capabilities really that necessary?
Depending on the game, they can be. For example, The World Ends With You utilizes all capabilities of the touch screen and stylus. Everything that you do in the game requires the stylus, from combat, to movement, to solving puzzles, to menu access. Its a great game if you're looking for an RPG that utilizes the touch screen. However, using the stylus to do everything can get slightly frustrating and repetitive.
What I am finding is that many other RPGs tend to have touch screen capability, just for the sake of it being there, yet there is no real reason for it. When the DS came out, it was supposed to revolutionize the handheld market because of its touch screen capabilities. However, when it comes to RPGs, I feel as though unless you are going to maximize the potential of the touch screen, that there does not need to be a use for it if it is not a core part of the gameplay. This why puzzle games and visual novels work so well and have gained so much popularity on the DS. Looking at RPGs, its a lot harder to make games that need to utilize the DS's touch screen. Summon Night: Twin Age was an absolutely fun game to play despite the game's shallow story. Do I think the DS touch screen controls were necessary to make it a better game? Not really. While it made for interesting gameplay, the use of touch screen controls did not really add to the experience of the game, nor did it hinder the game either. Would the game have benefited from a more traditional approach to gameplay? It is a tough call to make.
RPGs, for the most part, do not need to use the touch screen. I find games like Magical Starsign for example could have benefited from having not made the battle system touch screen based. It seems more like the type of game where it would have benefited from the use of traditional controls. In the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory incarnates, you can use your stylus to make the character walk and pick things up, but is there a point for using to stylus to do that when the D-pad makes everything far more simple? Even in Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl, you could use the stylus to do things, but for me, it felt so unnecessary that I just found myself going back to using the D-pad to do anything and everything, with the exception of the mini games because they required use of the stylus.
I think the touch screen is a great asset when you have a game that can utilize it, but considering the types of RPGs that have been coming out in the last few years, is it really necessary for each an every game to be touch screen compatible? Whatever happened to the good old fashioned D-pad?
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