RPG Experience Points and August 13th, 2012

RPG Experience Points: Prologue

Anyone who has talked about movies knows that no matter how many you have seen, there will always be a "OMG you haven't seen this?" moment that happens.  This happens with video games as well.  The Japanese RPG is my favorite genre overall and while I used to have a fairly good amount of experience with them, it has dropped off as of late.  There are various reasons, but the main being that JRPG development has slipped to portable systems as of late and also an emphasis on pure anime inspired design makes a lot of them look the "same" to my eyes.

This project started with a list and a set of notes.  I was trying to figure out what eras I was happy with my experience and which eras I need to focus on, and just give me a broader view of how to tackle the genre again.  I ended up breaking down the games into time periods of 2 years, and if you think not a lot of RPG's come out in 2 years, you will be amazed.  For each time period, I plan to have about 4 posts dedicated to it.  The Prime post will focus mainly on the JRPG's of this era.  The "Meanwhile in Japan" posts will be about some of the stuff going on over there that perhaps we never got to see.  Then for "Once Upon a Time in the West" I'll talk about significant trends in western developed RPG's.  Finally, the last one is sort of a "neat facts" or "interesting occurrences" of which the subject may or may not be related to the time period.

I find a couple of interesting points already.  I knew that after 2006ish, I had much less experience and even knowledge of the JRPG scene, but I also see a larger uptick in western developed RPGs.  I knew that JRPG imports went down in this era, but its amazing how little we have been getting lately.  While in the 90's it would be hard to choose 5 "must play" for every 2 years, now it is hard to find 5 "worth playing", as a lot of news lately on JRPG's is how "bad" they are received over here.  Personally I also find that I have a lot more "hours of experience" but haven't beaten games in the 90's and I know this is related to renting games.  More recently it is I either own it or i haven't played it at all.  Oh and don't expect a hard, fast rule on "released in Japan but not until the US later".  I may talk about Final Fantasy 5 in the 90-93 era, I may talk about it in the 98-99 era.  Anyway, its a lot of posts so expect to see them pop up from time to time often in the coming months.

August 13th, 2012

I hate how many calories I consume when I'm stressed, but dammit, its that or destroy my lungs with black smoke and my liver with alcohol.  Heart disease is currently more acceptable.

Watching Lodoss War for the first time in over 15 years.  I remember the big parts but not the small, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.  The voice acting really is good compared to what was going on at the time, and while its not quite as good as recent stuff, its really nice hearing a lot of the old 80's voice actors doing quality work outside of Disney Saturday stuff.  If you remember, I was watching some anime to test which I wanted to watch and one of them was Legend of the Legendary Heroes.  My girlfriend really liked what she saw of that one and we were going to watch it... then that thing hit me.  I have this thing where if something started something, I want people to see the originator first because I feel like they can appreciate things better.  In this case, all fantasy anime owes something to Lodoss War.  Everything from Legend of the Legendary Heroes, to Lunar Silver Star and Lunar Eternal Blue(she has played and beaten both, so extra cool references to that).  Before Lord of the Rings came out, this would probably be my pick for the best "fantasy" media outside of books.  Its pure D&D "High" "Tolkien" fantasy.  No splash of fairy tale, no hint of Raold Dahl, no zany British stuff from Terry Gilliam.  Just high fantasy with wizards, dragons, and a thief named Woodchuck.

Gamescon seriously underwhelmed me this year.  There really wasn't anything new or exciting from things I participate in.  Tokyo Game Show(TGS) is typically my 2nd most important show of the year, so I'm waiting for some neat stuff then.  Really hope its the year of the Japanese Devs comeback now that PS4 is easier to work with.  Silent Hill may be getting a really really great game.  I don't put much stock in Del Torro's influence on it(love the guy when he finishes projects), but having Kojima and Daryl from "The Walking Dead"(Norman Reedus) is pretty awesome.