First one on the block to own... oh, no!

by Raincrystal 

Oh, what is a gamer to do?

Whenever a new RPG comes out, I'm faced with a choice: should I leap ahead and buy it right away, or should I wait to hear others' opinions?

If I buy it right away, then if I dislike it and end up feeling that I wasted a lot of time on it, then it's my fault for jumping on the bandwagon and buying it just because of the hype. I can't complain that I wasted my time on a game I didn't like, because I rushed out and bought it, while a little patience and caution could have saved me 50 bucks and 50 hours of my life. (I am a slow gamer.) And what about "voting with your dollars?" If I've already bought a game, it's too late to show my dissatisfaction by not buying it. Such was my quandary with FF9.

However, if I don't buy a game right away, but rather wait to hear what everyone else thinks about it, then I face the problem of spoilers. Some people in this forum seem to think that if I don't rush out and buy a game as soon as it's released, it's my fault if I run into unmarked spoilers, because I "still haven't bothered to finish it." And how am I supposed to find out whether I want to play the game unless I read potentially spoiling things that people have said about it? Add in the fact that so many RPGs are being made now that I can never get to all of them within a twelve-month period of their release date, and I can't possibly avoid being spoiled for wanting to seek others' opinions on a game. If everyone marks their spoilers, then I shouldn't have too much of a problem, but there is still one final catch: Different people will have different opinions about games, and there is no way to know whether *I* will like a game unless *I* play it. I wasn't a huge Xenogears fan, but if I'd heard the things that people say about it, I would have thought it was exactly the sort of game I'd love.

Renting games is an option. However, because of the inherent fact that I must play RPGs for quite a long time before I know whether I will like them or not, rentals really never tell me what I need to know. For the first ten hours, I thought that FF9 was terrific; then I changed my mind. Conversely, I was not impressed by the beginning of FF4, but it is one of my favorite games of all time-- which I would never have predicted from a rental.

Thus, each time that an interesting-seeming new RPG comes out, I am faced with a torturous dilemma. Should I buy it or should I wait? How can I know whether I want to spend precious time and money on it until it's already spent? In the end, all I can do is guess and hope I don't end up with a lemon. Perhaps that is why I tend to be a brand-name loyalist: I firmly believe that companies other than Squaresoft are capable of making excellent games, but I don't know which ones are good, so I stick to Squaresoft like a half-eaten candy cane. I hate having to put all my chips in one jar, but sometimes I feel like I have no choice.