The [Personal] History of Video Games: JRPGs

Final Fantasy VII made me a gamer.  No, it wasn't the first game I played, but it was the game that made me serious about playing them.  I remember being in awe of the TV Spots that were shown with its release, I had never seen such a thing, they seemed so epic (I probably shouldn't have shattered that illusion by looking them upon youtube).  The first time I played the game was in 1999 when I visited a friend who lived in North Carolina.  He didn't own the game, his brother did, and I spent a disproportionate amount of my two week vactaion trying to beat it.

I played at a break neck pace, desperate to finish the game before going home, anxious to take my revenge upon Sephiroth. I had to fight bosses dozens of times to beat them, there was no time to go back and level up!  I remember that I didn't figure out the materia system until my friend's brother asked me why I wasn't using magic attacks.  I loved every minute of it.

Exciting battles.  An epic storyline.  Memorable characters.  Amazing graphics.  Beautiful music.

I was 15 years old and Final Fantasy VII was like nothing I had ever experienced.

W

What in the World According to Garp?!

After I returned from North Carolina I was determined to buy a Playstation and get my own copy of Final Fantasy VII.  I didn't have a job and so I had to do odd work for my mum's boss and the company my dad worked for in order to scrape together the money I needed.  The used Playstation cost me $75 used (it was the first console I bought with my own money) and I picked up the greatest hits version of the game from a grocery store.

Final Fantasy became my default Christmas gift for the next couple of years, 90% of the games I owned on the Playstation were JRPGs, and the reason I bought a Playstation 2 was because that was where the Final Fantasy series was going to be.  It's hard to properly express the impact this series has had on me and heartbreaking to admit that the love affair may be over.

 

Woe is me

I don't know how it happened, but for the last few years I've grown increasingly disappointed with JRPGs.  Where once I found excitement, now I'm just bored.  At a time when the games that interest me most are the ones that are expanding player interaction, JRPGs seems to scream "Hands Off," especially in terms of story.  I feel as though I've changed while JRPGs have remained static.  When I started playing RPGs I was younger than the character average, but now if there's a character older than myself he's usually the "old" man of the party.  Perhaps I'm just not the target audience for these games anymore.

Is that necessarily a bad thing?  I don't watch the same TV shows I did as a child (that isn't to say that JRPGs are inherently childish), so why is it so strange to think that my tastes in games would change over time?

Last year I didn't want to admit that it was over!  I convinced myself that I just wasn't playing the right games, that surely if I got my hands on more JRPGs I would see that everything was alright.  I bought a Nintedo DS, the JRPG machine of this generation and  picked up Final Fantasy IV, Dragon Quest V, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Suikoden Tierkreis, and The World Ends With You.

I couldn't bring myself to finish any of them.

This isn't a condemnation of JRPGs (this is a personal rant, not a critical one), but a eflection on how my attitude towards this genre has changed over the years.  These were the titles that made me love video games and I'm not ready to give them up, not yet.  After all, today marks the US release of Final Fantasy XIII and I'm waiting for it to be delivered.

Here's to hoping