A battle transition trigger that’s shown on the map itself.
While Random Encounters were a standard in the era of 2D, plenty of games at least experimented with a different approach. Early JRPGs such as Final Fantasy featured some visible NPCs that initiated combat, typically scripted boss encounters.
Later on, games like Lufia II used visible monsters in dungeons, while and Pokémon Red/Blue peppered trainer-NPCs between towns that sought to battle the player. Other games still like EarthBound and Chrono Trigger fully leaned into Field Encounters, showing all enemies on maps despite the additional costs.
With the move to 3D, a lot of the technical limitations that necessitated Random Encounters were greatly minimized. Memory constraints became less crippling and enemy models could be used both in the field and in battles.
This evolution went down various paths — including some series transitioning to mostly real-time, in-map combat systems — but I’ll stay focused on titles that remained largely analogous to those with Random Encounters.
In order to implement Field Encounters, a variety of elements need to be considered:
As with Random Encounters, I also appended each category with some brainstorming for unexplored approaches.
In addition to the above, field enemies tend to use animations and overhead icons to indicate their behavioural state. For example, enemies in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete use a unique chase animation when pursuing the player, while enemies in Radiant Historia display a dizzy icon when weakened.
Auras, glows, and highlights can also indicate a particularly strong enemy or rare encounter, e.g., the red and blue auras in Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! represent big and small creature variants respectively.
The simplest and most common behaviour of Field Enemies is to chase the player once they’re spotted, and to initiate combat when contact is made. However, more nuanced actions can be implemented with field-specific properties such as:
Combined with a basic State Machine, these properties can be used to create distinct and varied field-enemies. Some examples:
A human sentry slowly patrols between two points in front of a courtyard gate. His vision cone is long but narrow so he only sees what he faces, and a state timer provides a grace period during which a spotted player can get away without raising an alarm. If fully detected, the sentry quickly dives at the player, but needs some time to recover if he misses. If the player leads him too far from the gate, the guard’s movement restriction kicks in and he returns to his post.
Conversely, a guard dog stands still in one location with a short awareness range, as if sleeping, but with a full circle for its vision cone so that it can “smell/hear” the player from any direction. If alerted, the dog continuously homes in on the player’s location, never slowing or stopping, and sprints at a higher speed than the player. Due to no movement restrictions or chase time limits, the dog continues to pursue the player until it is fought or the map is exited.
While it would be easy to emulate the state-based behaviours present in platformers and action-RPGs, there’s a risk in putting too much focus on real-time challenges. Such an approach can diminish the importance of the actual battle system and alienate those looking to avoid dexterity-based gameplay.
Chrono Cross partially avoids the issue by scripting a variety of unique encounters: boulders can be rolled to block Komodo Pups from running away, PortalGheists disguise themselves as regular doors and can be used as such but only when their demonic periodically cycles away, various Viper Manor guards rush out when the player steps out onto a lit red carpet, etc.
Finally, on top of individual behaviour, global systems can further impact gameplay:
The main interaction with in-field enemies is starting actual combat, which is commonly initiated in three different ways:
Combat advantage typically manifests as a speed-bonus/free turns, giving a distinct upper hand to the aggressor. Aside from jockeying for advantage, other in-field interactions also include:
Field Encounters have become a standard in JRPGs — even re-releases of classics such as Dragon Quest VIII embrace the system over Random Encounters.
Fans seem to have largely embraced the trend, often citing the ability to avoid enemies as a positive development. However, this claim seems to be at least slightly exaggerated. Enemies in the field can move faster than the player, approach from multiple directions, clog up narrow dungeon corridors, and have countless other variables weighed in their favour to force combat.
More accurately, the main advantage of Field Encounters — aside from being inherently less abstract — is a greater sense of player agency. Being able to anticipate an encounter, heal up for it, change party members or equipment, and manually initiate the battle can make for a much more deliberate experience.
The flipside of this is that Field Encounters can hamper exploration. Going down each path of a forked road is a lot less enticing when both routes are filled with enemies. Juking past them — if possible — just to see if there’s something worthwhile on the other end can get quite tedious, if not downright stressful.
If you know of any titles that alleviate this issue (if not solve it), leave a comment below. And if not, simply share your favourite implementations of Field Encounters and what made them so enjoyable!
]]>There hasn’t been a whole lot of effort dedicated to improving random encounters, but they have slowly changed over time. To analyze this evolution, I first started with a definition:
A battle transition that takes place at irregular intervals and randomizes the opponents.
This means that single monsters wandering the field in EarthBound and the radar-blips of overworld encounters in 7th Saga don’t count.
Next, after taking notes from dozens of games and canvassing the fanbase, I separated random encounters into 6 main categories:
For each category, I also proposed a few quick ideas to help improve random encounters, or simply provide a new spin on the mechanic.
Older titles also occasionally used “spike tiles.” These always launched a battle when stepped on, often a boss fight, but were fairly indistinguishable from truly random encounters.
A few games also mix up the grind of fighting with non-combat encounters, e.g., the friendly monsters and the Ragtime Mouse of Final Fantasy IX.
Turning encounters into fully integrated systems is a concept with plenty of room for growth. Older CRPGs tied skills to previewing encounters, and newer ones often use resources to avoid ambushes while resting, but entirely new interfaces could also be implemented to make managing the mechanic more interesting.
Aside from simply limiting encounter rates, there are plenty of steps that can minimize common frustrations with random battles:
Games that suffer from some of the above points are fairly easy to point out, but which games do you think did random encounters right? Did they contain any notable mechanics I missed, and what else would you do to improve on existing encounter systems?
]]>Following an era where the PSX reigned supreme, the 6th console generation got a significant hardware upgrade with more storage space, larger resolutions, higher poly counts, etc. The extra horsepower allowed for many genres to better realize their settings and mechanics, and JRPGs were no exception.
Real-time combat was no longer limited to the Tales and Star Ocean series, and freeform movement opened the door for various new action-RPGs like the massively successful Kingdom Hearts.
Turn-based party-battlers were still plentiful, but it was perhaps the first step to catering for a broader audience at the cost of alienating older fans.
It was also when JRPGs lost me.
The higher fidelity presentation meant that previous abstractions were now shown in their full glory, or lack thereof. Instead of a pixelated knight bowing his head and saying a single dubiously-translated line of dialogue, the protagonist was now an emotional teenager — complete with grating voice acting and a smirking portrait — blathering on for entire paragraphs with rarely an option to skip ahead.
There were no longer any blanks to fill, and the added content was skewed for a younger demographic. Consequently I didn’t play any of these games upon release, and about half of them were brand new to me.
The Dreamcast was something of a stopgap before the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube truly ushered in the new console generation. The first of its standout JRPGs was Grandia II, the most fondly remembered entry in the series that received multiple re-releases over the years.
The opening of Grandia II smacks of the previous generation. It starts with a short anime video, followed by an in-engine cutscene involving various characters, and is capped off with another in-game cutscene introducing the protagonist.
Despite showing some combat encounters, this opening is entirely non-interactive and unskippable. However, as soon as it’s finished the milestones come rapidly.
The opening area is a mini-dungeon, with a save point close-by. Combat is initiated via on-screen enemies that glow red when they spot the player.
After the initial encounter, the first gear upgrade is obtained, followed by the first consumable, and finally a rest spot. All of this takes less than 5 minutes, and the overworld map is reached within half an hour.
From there, things slow down a bit as the first town is reached. NPCs often have different things to say when they’re spoken to repeatedly, and the plot necessitates some dungeon exploration. A level up takes place during this quest, and the first companion joins upon returning.
Ability customization follows right after, but 2 hours proves not quite enough time to reach the first boss.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
Just a couple of months after Grandia II, the Dreamcast got its other landmark JRPG: Skies of Arcadia. While it was critically acclaimed for its lighthearted, adventurous spirit, it didn’t sell as well as expected. The game only got a GameCube upgrade, with various other re-releases being cancelled.
Despite this, Skies of Arcadia is fondly remembered as a title that hearkens back to what made JRPGs great in the previous generations.
After a short, in-engine cinematic, the player is thrust directly into combat. When the battle ends, the party finds itself in a dungeon with an item close by. With a bit of exploration and fighting, the first level up is achieved just before finding a save point. Within 10 minutes of the initial combat, the dungeon’s boss is encountered, and a new ability is obtained after his defeat.
When the party escapes to the overworld, the rapid pace slows down a little. This is the first time any tutorials are presented, and the player gets to explore the land aboard their airship.
Back in the protagonist’s home town, some shops open up and plenty of cutscenes and general exploration takes place. Due to the scripted nature of this segment, there actually is no manual resting until the second dungeon is completed.
Combat is initiated with random battles, which aren’t as frequent as many online complaints indicate, but they’re not rare either. Consequently the 2 hour mark elapses just before the first new party member joins the crew.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
FFVII was a breakout hit on the original PlayStation, and FFX aimed to duplicate that success on the PS2. While it wasn’t the first fully 3D JRPG, FFX’s production values were significantly higher than those of its contemporaries. Voice overs and custom animations were no longer limited to prerendered cinematics, and the overall fidelity was a clear step up.
It might not have been as drastic a transition as the series’ previous generational leap, but the sales and critical reception of FFX all seemed to indicate that it lived up to its hype. Consequently it received various remasters, and was the first mainline entry to get a direct sequel.
It was also the first Final Fantasy game that I gave up on when it deposited a net in my hands and told me to go catch some butterflies.
After a short and somber intro showcasing the game’s cast, the player takes control of Tidus, a professional athlete on his way to a sports match.
Following 10 minutes of fan-conversations and some very linear exploration, the event kicks off but is immediately interrupted by a huge monster attacking the city. A companion quickly joins up, and the first battle takes place. The combat is quite fast, with hasty animations and the old ATB system being replaced with one that instantly skips to the next combatant’s turn.
The intro combat sequence is quite interesting as the party faces enemies both in the front and back, with the rear enemies respawning if killed. By defeating the front ones, the party “moves forward” without exiting the battle scene. Eventually an easy boss fight takes place, and a save point is found right after.
Following some surreal cutscenes, the player is deposited in the first dungeon. The area is quite atmospheric, with the mystery of what just happened and where the protagonist finds himself squarely in the forefront. There are no immediate explanations, just monsters and a sense solitude. An item is found pretty quickly, and after some light puzzles and a level up, a human faction is encountered that speaks a foreign language (a rarity in JRPGs).
The encounter with the Al Bhed results in a lengthy tutorial on obtaining abilities, and yet another dungeon. The protagonist is eventually separated from the group and transported to a whole new location. Here the game proper begins, and after a lot of cutscenes, tutorials, and exploration, the first reusable rest spot and equipment are discovered.
However, it’s not quite enough to reach the next hub within 2 hours.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
Golden Sun served as something of a next-step JRPG for Pokemon fans. It was split into two titles on the Game Boy Advance, and received a sequel on Nintendo DS. Despite not selling a tremendous amount, the series gained a cult following that cherished its focus on puzzle dungeons.
Golden Sun starts off very quickly by making the introduction largely interactive. Saving can be done at any point from the main menu, and a companion joins up right before the first fight. However, the rest of opening slows down to an crawl due to the first instance (at least on these lists) of text-grind.
Just like in visual novels, all characters have a lot to say. They constantly repeat themselves, restate and confirm the obvious, and generally take a long time to say nothing.
The cramped text box doesn’t help matters, but what’s even worse are the constant dialogue interruptions. Characters not only take breaks to change poses, but also display floating emojis to reaffirm their emotional state. These elements really drag out the first half-hour, and the only new milestone during this time is obtaining a puzzle-related ability.
Eventually some shops open up providing items & equipment for purchase, and the first rest spot becomes available. The dungeon that follows isn’t too difficult, but random encounters are quite frequent and the combat has a halting flow. This is mainly due to a Dragon Quest like battle log where each message must be manually confirmed.
Just over an hour and a half into the game, the opening sequence finally ends. The party sets out on the overworld map, but this doesn’t leave enough time to encounter the first boss.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
Despite its reputation for being a Western-themed series, Wild Arms always focused on magic, monsters, castles, mechs, and other common trappings of JRPGs. Out of all the games, Wild Arms 3 came closest to capturing the vibe of the Wild West, and is arguably the series’ standout entry.
A scripted sequence introduces something of a crisis aboard a train, with the four main characters facing each other in a standoff. This serves as a character select screen, with the option to play through the prologues in any order before the game proper begins.
Starting with the default character, a short cutscene plays before she’s ushered into the first dungeon. Combat takes place right away, and an ability is found shortly after to help with environmental puzzles. The first items is collected following some exploration, and within 10 minutes the first boss encounter takes place.
When the boss is defeated, a level up takes place and a save option is presented before moving on to the next character’s section. This pattern continues for all party members, which is why there’s a long delay before resting and overworld travel come in at around the 75 minute mark. The last dungeon also proves too lengthy to obtain the first gear upgrade before the 2 hour marks elapses.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
Prior to their success with Xenoblade Chronicles, Monolith Soft aimed to shore up the GameCube’s scarcity of JRPGs with Baten Kaitos. Teaming up with tri-Crescendo, the two companies strayed a bit from tradition by basing the game’s combat on a card system.
The reception of Baten Kaitos was generally positive — it’s easily remembered as one of the console’s best JRPGs — but this did not result in tremendous sales numbers. A sequel was met with a similar reception, and the series was shelved soon after.
Following a 5 minute intro, control is given to the player in a small village with a save point, an item store, and a rest spot.
While beautiful looking, the scripting system shows its age with rigid, state-driven cutscenes. These require a fade-to-black intro and outro, resetting the position of all applicable NPCs and party members. Not only does this add an unnecessary delay, it also comes across as very awkward when the reset leaves all characters in the same spots.
Exiting the village leads to a miniaturized overworld map reminiscent of Chrono Cross. Here all key locations are close by and no random encounters take place. Entering the first dungeon is soon followed by combat, but the exploration is a much lengthier process. The areas aren’t sprawling, but a constant stream of new cards necessitates a fair amount of deck management.
After roughly 25 minutes in the dungeon, a boss battle takes place and a companion joins up after its defeat. From here things slow down considerably with more cutscenes and another dungeon area.
At the 75 minute mark, the first equipment upgrade is obtained, followed 10 minutes later by a brand new ability. The final milestone is hit in the second, much larger town where the mechanism for leveling up is finally unlocked.
FTC: 1:41:36
Miscellaneous Points:
As a successor to Koudelka, Shadow Hearts took place in a fantastical version of our Earth just prior to World War 1. It combined wacky anime stylings with various occult elements of both the West and the East. Its own sequel, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, continued the tradition and picked up the story right after the first game ended.
Despite moderate sales, the PS2 series is a true cult-classic that’s lauded for its unique setting and combat mechanics.
The intro is fairly lengthy, actually allowing the player to save a few minutes before its conclusion. When the opening finally ends, the player is deposited in the first dungeon just before 15 minutes have elapsed.
Exploration is almost immediately followed by combat, and a few minutes later the first item is picked up. Tutorials accompany most random encounters during the next 20 minutes, which is somewhat understandable given the complexities of the battle system. The timed inputs of the Judgement Ring are used for many different action, and a combo system provides further options that are available from the get-go.
Hitting milestones picks up again during a 10 minute span where new gear is obtained, the first level-up takes place, the first boss is encountered, and the node-based overworld map is unlocked.
The second dungeon is of similar length to the first, but provides a rest spot early on. Roughly half an hour later, the party composition goes through a shake-up, and the final milestone is hit when a new ability is obtained.
FTC: 1:01:24
Miscellaneous Points:
After the original Super Mario RPG, Nintendo and SquareSoft parted ways on rather unfriendly terms. This left the Nintendo 64 bereft of marquee JRPGs, leading Mario’s creators to develop their own quirky, papercraft-inspired sequel.
Nintendo continued this series with a GameCube sequel that improved on virtually all elements of the original. The Thousand-Year Door oozes charm, and stands the test of time better than perhaps any of its contemporaries.
After a quick, storybook-framed intro, the player is deposited in a seedy port town. A save point is visible in the distance, and just beyond it Mario gets himself into a rather comical scrap.
The character he rescues eventually joins up, and exploring the town quickly reveals an item shop and an inn. A series of thorough tutorials and cutscenes follow, but within the first half hour Mario finds himself in a dungeon.
The underground area is fairly small, but has a decent amount of side areas and interactive elements. Enemies are visible on the map and can be avoided, but due to input-mechanics, actual combat takes a fair amount of time. Thankfully defeated enemies don’t respawn while in the dungeon, making backtracking quick and easy.
A new ability must be obtained in order to proceed, which leads to the first equipment upgrade and boss fight. This doesn’t immediately result in a level-up, but that takes place right after reaching the next area. Once there, a linear path guides Mario to the second hub-town, hitting the final milestone just over an hour into the game.
FTC: 59:31
Miscellaneous Points:
Dragon Quest has historically been something of a comfort-JRPG, holding on to its conventions while being dragged kicking and screaming into each new console generation. Dragon Quest VIII felt like a lot of these holdovers were finally left behind — Dragon Warrior was no longer its title, voice acting was added, a fully 3D presentation was embraced, etc.
However, thematically the game was still firmly set in its roots. Instead of an epic quest, its narrative felt more like a fairy tale where the party adventured from town to town getting to know the inhabitants and helping them solve comparatively minor problems. This approach finally proved successful both in the East and the West, and Dragon Quest VIII went on to be lauded as a highlight of the series.
After a short 2 minute intro, the player is deposited in a small area and almost immediately enters combat. An item is discovered after the battle’s conclusion, and a cutscene has the protagonist’s companion officially join the party.
The group eventually arrives at the first town packed with colourful residents. A store provides a gear upgrade, and a fair amount of dialogue sequences take place to progress the story. After the final cutscene, an inn opens up and the city’s gates are unlocked.
A path to the first dungeon is evident from the get-go, but the overworld map is presented at the same scale as the town. This results in a lot of time spent exploring even if the random encounter rate isn’t overly high. This approach requires multiple trips back to town to restock and recover — gaining a level and the first ability along the way — and takes nearly an hour to complete.
The dungeon itself is finally ready for exploration at the 90 minute marks, and the final milestone comes only 15 minutes later with the first boss battle.
FTC: 1:45:47
Miscellaneous Points:
The Persona series started off as one of many MegaTen spinoffs, but developed its own identity over time. Persona 3 was the first entry in the series to really take off, combining the high school setting with new mainstays such as social links, a strict day-by-day timeline, non-combat attributes, snazzy UI, and a pop-y, earworm soundtrack.
Persona 4 ran with these changes and polished them up, segmenting the randomly generated dungeons into narrative and aesthetic wholes, giving full control of all party members, and switching up the setting to a rural Japanese town. It’s arguably a series favourite and received multiple spinoffs and upgrades, including a recent PC release.
It’s also the only game on this list that I’ve previously played to completion.
Persona is notorious for aping text-heavy visual novels, but this doesn’t take it completely outside the bounds of the 12 milestones. The multi-faceted opening that mixes anime and in-engine cutscenes ends just after 10 minutes, and the game then rapidly hits the mobility, save, rest, and combat milestones.
However, the railroading soon resumes, slowly introducing the setting and the game’s narrative hook. This ends at the 1 hour mark, with the party preparing to face the dangers ahead. Within 15 minutes, the first consumable is found, a level-up takes place, a boss is fought, and the first new ability is unlocked. This segment is still entirely scripted, though, with no free movement and all progression stitched together with cutscenes.
The real dungeon preparation takes place at the 100 minute mark, with gear upgrades and the first companion officially joining the party. 10 minutes later dungeon-exploration finally opens up, but this proves not quite enough time to unlock the final travel milestone via a town map.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
There was a general rise in 6th generation median times, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the previous transition.
Out of the seven milestones that took longer to reach, each increased by roughly 10 minutes or less. Two other medians — combat and gear — also stayed at pretty much the same spot, only differing by a few seconds.
The remaining three milestones actually dropped, and these were fairly significant as each decrease was greater than any of the increases.
Saving happened 15 minutes earlier, perhaps looking to address frustrations from restarting lengthy intros. Both dungeons and boss battles also took place 20 minutes earlier, seemingly part of a concentrated effort to get players into the core experience much quicker. However, it’s worth pointing out that these sequences were still part of the onboarding process, with linear exploration and bosses that rarely posed the same threat as in earlier generations.
The milestone spreads generally increased as well, with five different ones falling outside the 2-hour limit (compared to just two in the 5th generation, and only one in the 4th). This indicated a larger divergence in JRPG pacing, although mobility, combat, and saving all shrunk down to become a universal core of the early-game.
Obtaining unique abilities also got slotted in earlier, which was indicative of more complex progression mechanisms. Leveling up actually leapfrogged the ability milestone, showing a clear desire to give the player something cool to play with early on in the experience.
I was actually surprised to see all milestones present in every game, although only four of them managed to hit FTC. Out of these, The Thousand-Year Door was the quickest to the mark, coming in at just under 1 hour despite its plentiful, hand-holding tutorials. However, the FTC metric became something of a misnomer as entirely new mechanics were being introduced 5-10 hours into various titles.
Combat typically stuck to the smaller cast of the previous generation — three party members, and a similar amount of foes. Long attack animations got curtailed, but combat wasn’t really faster due to additional meta mechanics. Keeping track of turns-lists, common resource pools, physical navigation of the battlefield, and completing input minigames all worked to extend the battles.
The combatants themselves also got more customizable and tended to stay in the party instead of departing for narrative reasons. This presented XP-distribution and character-progression issues, and the higher fidelity presentation made the “reserve squad” that much sillier to witness. Even when fighting in open fields, only the current party could attack the enemy forces. Other companions could tag-in, but if everyone on-screen died, the fight was over.
These types of suspension-of-disbelief problems became extremely common in the 6th generation. As JRPG visuals got less abstract, their mechanics became more so. This “systemization” became a big part of how the games were advertised, and convoluted gameplay ideas always seemed to trump narrative and worldbuilding concerns.
The upside of a willingness to experiment was that the games were more mechanically varied than I anticipated. There might not have been any titles quite as unique as Panzer Dragoon Saga, but Minstrel Song, Dragon Quarter, Mana Khemia, and various others prevented the genre from becoming trite.
What did leave a sour taste in my mouth were the character-driven stories.
Most narratives were incredibly juvenile and formulaic, endlessly regurgitating Shonen Jump tropes. There was rarely an attempt to appeal to a broader audience, or to even diversify within the existing one by taking cues from YA novels and other Western media. This rigidity left me feeling alienated and made me wonder — could JRPG storytelling ever move in a different direction?
]]>In the previous entry, I analyzed ten notable turn-based JRPGs from the 16-bit era. Each title was measured on how long it took to reach 12 different milestones common to the genre. My goal was to help quantify the amount of time required to “get into” these games by obtaining a certain level of comfort with their mechanics.
An additional goal was to measure how these metrics changed over time, which we can now observe with the 5th generation of consoles.
CD-ROM extensions existed in the previous generation, but this was the first time the medium became the prevalent storage format. This resulted in much more space for base assets as well as new elements such as prerecorded movies and voice overs. The extra production values sometimes came at the cost of loading times, but most games embraced the approach, especially for narrative purposes.
Another aspect of the 5th console generation that helped blur genre-lines was the memory card. Obtaining permanent upgrades and saving one’s progress was no longer the sole domain of JRPGs. This provided titles such as Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil room to breathe and pace out their experiences without relying on password systems or built-in battery backups.
JRPGs also started to include more real-time elements, and not just in their minigames. Series such as the Tales and Star Ocean showcased a more action oriented approach to combat and finally got Western releases. In fact, pretty much everything made it out to the West, including more offbeat JRPGs such as Koudelka, the SaGa games, and the Persona series.
During the 5th console generation I was catching up on classic CRPGs like Ultima VII and Betrayal at Krondor, and enjoying more contemporary PC releases like Fallout and Planescape: Torment. However, I was still firmly entrenched in the JRPG genre and checked out most of these titles upon release.
Starting off with a bang, Final Fantasy VII is largely credited with making JRPGs a mainstream genre in the west.
Following a dramatic split with Nintendo, SquareSoft embraced the CD-ROM and created the best selling and arguably the most beloved entry in the series. It was a huge production — and the first JRPG I recall seeing ads for on prime time TV — that ended up spawning a slew of side-games and leading to an ill-conceived CG movie.
Behind the scenes, FF VII was a bit of a rickety mess. Characters lacked texturing, FMVs were inconsistent, various parts of the game ran at a different FPS rate, and entire chunks were coded in isolation becoming separate executables launched by the main engine (I once worked with someone involved in the PC port, and he lamented trying to backtrace assembly variables from the minigames named “a”, “aa”, “aaa”, and so on).
Despite these technical issues, the fan community is still modding the game, and SqaureEnix itself has recently announced a full blown remake.
FF VII starts off with a vary patient 46-second view of a starry night before the FMV kicks into full swing. The famous sweep over Midgard city quickly transitions to full player control as Cloud and the rest of Avalanche make their way to a Mako reactor.
The first enemies are felled in a cutscene and yield an item, and a scripted combat encounter follows right after. When the opponents are dispatched, Cloud levels-up and joins his companions as the party enters the dungeon-proper. The first save spot is encountered about 2/3 of the way through, and in just over 15 minutes the first boss battle takes place.
It’s a blistering pace, and when it finally slows down for some character development, it does so while providing a rest spot and an equipment store. The first ability-granting materia is eventually “unlocked” as well, but the quick pace and grandiose scale sputter as the player is forced to do a squats minigame to obtain a blonde wig — among various banal objectives — so that Cloud can crossdress as an escort for a local crime boss.
The game picks up yet again with another Mako reactor sabotage and a storming of the excellent Shin-Ra Tower, but it takes significantly more time to enter the overworld map.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
I snubbed the first two Breath of Fire games on the SNES as the third entry proved to be highest ranked overall.
Taking the opposite approach of FF VII, BoF III uses fully 3D backgrounds with sprites representing characters and enemies. These are a big step up from the 4th console generation, appearing larger, more detailed, and fully animated. They also work really well with the colourful, cartoony environment textures — something that’s an issue for many PSX titles that relied on low-res CG environments and bland 3D models.
Breath of Fire III never won any major awards, but it cemented the series as Capcom’s flagship JRPG property.
Breath of Fire III is the first game to start off in the middle of a battle, but it’s not a challenging one. The player takes control of a baby dragon newly excavated from a giant crystal. The little drake proceeds to char all the miners he encounters, but is eventually knocked out and captured.
Following his imprisonment, the baby is shipped out of the mines in a little prison cart, but he shuffles around in the cage and eventually topples down a cliff… where he awakens as a naked little baby boy! It’s a great intro that sets up an interesting mystery, but the narrative immediately abandons it for unfocused, slice-of-life vignettes.
The protagonist is adopted by a small group of vagrants and the group attempts to steal some food, fails, tries again, fails again, gets punished with minigame-chores, then splits up to explore a side-area in a somewhat contrived fashion.
The meandering progression feels all the longer due to how text is handled in the game.
Even at the fastest speed, the text prints out slowly and can’t be sped up/skipped with button presses. It also has an animation for exiting out, and the whole text window animates in and out as different speakers say their lines. It’s painfully slow and is used to tell a rather mundane story, at least in the early parts of the game.
Mechanically BoF III comes in below the median for most 5th-gen gameplay milestones, but even there it comes across as unnecessarily prolonged. The player wakes up in a bed, but can’t rest there again until an arbitrary narrative point is reached. Boss encounters take place early on, but their conclusions are scripted and play out as gimmicky cutscenes. The first piece of gear is actually obtained in the intro segment, but can’t be equipped as the player doesn’t gain access to the entire in-game menu until roughly twenty minutes into the game!
It’s a bit of shame that BoF III felt like such a grind as it introduced various gameplay elements that firmly positioned it as a next-gen JRPG.
FTC: 1:42:14
Miscellaneous Points:
It seems SquareSoft was hedging its bets with Xenogears by taking a completely different development approach from Final Fantasy VII. FF VII had pre-rendered backgrounds, Xenogears was fully 3D; FF VII used 3D models for all characters, Xenogears used sprites; FF VII was filled with CG cutscenes, Xenogears relied on 2D anime clips.
In the end, both games had a bumpy development process. The latter parts of Xenogears were largely skipped over, replaced with simple sequences that narrated what should have been experienced by the player.
However, the game’s parallels to the hugely popular Neon Genesis Evangelion (the mechs, waxing philosophy, religious overtones, etc.) greatly resonated with fans. Xenogears became hugely successful, and even launched a spiritual successor in Xenosaga.
Xenogears has the first somewhat lengthy intro, but it still relinquishes control less than 10 minutes into the game. Resting and item acquisition happen right after, but exploring the town is a lengthy process.
Much like BoF III, text prints out at a painfully slow rate, and there’s no way to speed it up. It’s a common complaint that fans tried to address through a bit of hacking.
Text boxes are typically 4 lines tall, accommodate portraits where applicable, and can often be walked away from to terminate the dialogue à la Chrono Trigger. However, playing in a completionist fashion prevents this, and the NPCs have a lot to say. Their dialogue sequences are longer and more involved than in the last generation, and they often have secondary dialogues once the initial one is processed.
The biggest offender of this is a Lucca cameo where she takes a whopping 23 large text boxes (more than 4 lines), to explain game saving. Her diatribe could’ve easily been summarized as “You can save your game on the overworld map or at special markers.”
Fully exploring the starting town takes about 35 minutes, delaying various other milestones. Once the game finally proceeds to the first dungeon, random battles happen at a fairly high rate. The first level-up doesn’t take long to reach, and after some cutscenes a scripted mech fight takes place. The first special ability is awarded at its conclusion, and the player proceeds to get kicked out to the overworld map.
A second dungeon follows soon after wherein the first companion joins the party, the first piece of gear is found, and the first true boss is fought at just under 2 hours.
FTC: 1:42:16
Miscellaneous Points:
Out of the 5th generation list, Legend of Legaia is a game that best exemplifies a cult-classic. It’s also the one that most resembles a 4th generation JRPG, albeit upgraded to full 3D for both characters and environments.
It’s often brought up as an underrated PSX gem, and although it did get a PS2 sequel, Sony did not continue with the series afterwards.
In a setup reminiscent of the Mistborn series, the protagonist starts off in a small town isolated by dangerous mists and the monsters that come with them. Once the intro finishes, the player can save their game, get an item, participate in a combat tutorial, and gain a new ability all within 10 minutes.
A slew of narrative cutscenes follow, but these are quite short and spread out with plenty of freedom in between. The narrative does a good job of introducing the gameworld and its characters, and the text can be skipped instantly with a button press. NPCs also say only one or two lines, and simply repeat the same text upon subsequent conversations.
Eventually a scripted encounter with the antagonist takes place, the protagonist levels up and gains some new equipment, and the overworld map opens up. It takes another 15 minutes or so to reach the first resting spot and the first dungeon.
Combat itself is quite frequent, takes a while to load, and lasts a fairly long time. Despite the battles often involving only two or three combatants, a lot of effort is spent on looking up combos, selecting attack inputs, and watching characters run up to each other and attack.
When the initial dungeon is conquered, a new PoV character is introduced. Since they eventually join the party, I noted this as the point at which they’re obtained. More narrative scenes and dungeon exploration follows, capped off by the first two boss battle.
FTC: 1:46:56
Miscellaneous Points:
More so than any other game on the list, Suikoden II managed to recaptured my nostalgic love of JRPGs. I first played it well into the 6th generation, but Konami’s flagship series instantly clicked with me.
In a way it makes perfect sense as Suikoden II feels most like a direct evolution of 16-bit era JRPGs. The sprites are bigger, there are tons more custom animations, proper shading gives the tile maps an extra visual touch, the storyline focuses on political intrigue rather than an ancient evil, and the epic conflict is well represented with heavily scripted SRPG battles.
Suikoden II is widely considered the best of the series, and it was a big inspiration for this series of posts. My memories of it were certainly rose-tinted, so I definitely wanted to see how it stacked up against its contemporaries.
Suikoden II starts off very quickly, setting off international strife with an ambush on a young group of military recruits. The event is a sham orchestrated by the boys’ senior officers in order to provoke a war with the neighbouring nation.
The first 10 minutes bring mobility, items, combat, and a level-up. Text prints out almost instantly and NPCs don’t have a whole lot to say, although their dialogue often changes when new story beats are reached. Combat is also blistering-fast as all actions are queued up ahead of time and executed in a staggered, semi-simultaneous fashion.
Attack order, successful hits, damage amounts, etc., seem to be calculated when the player finishes their inputs, with the actual combat round simply playing the calculated animations. There are some delays here to show enemy strikes and mass-damage spells, but there’s a very quick flow to the battles and they allow for a maximum of 12 combatants — a huge increase over the typical 6-7 participants common to this generation.
When the opening finishes, the protagonist is captured by members of the enemy state and imprisoned. This section proved a lot longer than I remembered, lasting around 30 minutes as the protagonist is forced to perform various menial chores. However, none of it felt as aimless as BoF III’s post-opening as it was used for worldbuilding that directly tied into the political conflict of the intro.
There’s also plenty of new gameplay while serving the captors, with the first companions joining the party, gear upgrades being made available, the overworld map opening up, and the player finding a place to rest and save.
The hero eventually breaks out and journeys to his hometown through a dungeon, battling a boss along the way. The only milestone that is missing at this point is a new ability, but it takes another hour or so to start slotting runes in magic shops. It doesn’t feel that way, though, as plenty of new companions come packaged with unique abilities, and new combination attacks are automatically unlocked based on who’s in the party.
FTC: 1:45:07
Miscellaneous Points:
The second Final Fantasy entry on the PSX featured upgraded character models and a divisive junctioning system that permeated all aspects of the game. Much like FF II’s learn-by-doing approach, the junctions were a drastic gameplay departure from the previous titles and the system buckled a bit under its own weight.
The game itself seemed to follow SquareSoft’s focus on anime and pop-culture trends, leaving all traces of medieval Europe for a sci-fi setting that included a military school for teenagers, beach imagery, and overtones of idol culture.
Over the years, FF VIII has garnered something of a darling status for its unabashedly unique gameplay conventions, but SquareEnix has not been quick to celebrate it (although it does look like the remaster is at least getting some voice-overs, if not a full remake like FF VII).
FF VIII’s intro takes 5 minutes, and is then an even slower grind for a completionist playthrough. In addition to various cutscenes, the opening area is quite big and requires plenty of backtracking. The exploration is also severely slowed down if the player wants to peruse the in-game lexicon that’s unlocked soon after gaining control.
This in-game encyclopedia contains not only a plethora of tutorials, including the entire ruleset and all variations for the card-battling minigame, but tons of extra flavour text, e.g., a history of the school, student conduct guidelines, a message board where a companion despairs about the lack of hot dogs, etc.
There is no gradual unlocking of all this text; its entirety is available right away despite FF VIII being by far the most systems-heavy game on the list. What’s worse, going through these tutorials doesn’t seem to flag them as having been viewed and completed — I was still forced to sit through the junctioning tutorial once I reached its trigger in the narrative even though I had already read it.
Once exploration of Balamb Garden kicks off, save and rest points are reached, followed by some optional combat. A strange design choice here is the potential to encounter a very powerful enemy that can easily defeat the protagonist, or a group of weak enemies that can repeatedly put him to sleep. This caused the first battle to last 5 minutes as I had no companions that could cure the status effect, and the enemies themselves had plenty of HP.
The combat area contains some items and spells, though, so exploring it is worth it.
Once the player is ready to proceed, a companion joins up, the overworld map is unlocked, the first level-up takes place, the first dungeon is reached, and the first boss is fought all within roughly 15 minutes.
The only milestone that is not obtained in the first 2 hours is a gear upgrade. There is no armour in FF VIII — all external stat boosts are done via junctioning — and new weapons are slowly crafted by obtaining the necessary parts from enemies and various “refining” mechanics that take a while to unlock.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
While not quite the departure of Radical Dreamers, Chrono Cross was a very indirect sequel. Xenogears was initially supposed to be the follow up to Chrono Trigger, but those plans were scrapped once the new project diverted in its own direction.
Chrono Cross felt like it wanted to do the same.
It swapped a small party of time-traveling adventurers for an almost Suikoden-in-size cast spread across two different dimensions. The narrative and gameplay had shades of Chrono Trigger, but those felt more tacked on rather than the core of the experience. The end product was well received overall, but heavily criticized for this disparity.
An intro FMV plays before the title screen, making the opening cutscene just over a minute long. The party starts off in dungeon with visible enemies, but it’s tricky not getting into at least one fight. Much like the FF games, combat loading is masked with a sweeping camera and summary screens, but plays out fairly quickly.
At the 8 minutes mark, the protagonist wakes up from the intro-dream and opens the blinds in his room; a clear homage to Chrono Trigger. There’s a hidden item close by and the bed provides a free rest point. Exploring the village itself takes about 20 minutes as there’s quite a bit to do.
In addition to a proper combat tutorial, there’s new gear and abilities to uncover, a secret companion to recruit, and even a side quest. Text prints out quite quickly and the villagers typically only have a few short things to say. However, a few do drone on and on about their lives using way more text than necessary — an emerging theme in this generation.
At just under the half-hour mark, the world map and saving is made available, and the first dungeon is entered. It takes another 15 minutes or so to complete it, encounter the first boss, and achieve the first level up.
FTC: 44:51
Miscellaneous Points:
Wanting to capitalize on the success of the FF VII, Sony commissioned its own “clone” of the game.
Developed internally by a large studio, The Legend of the Dragoon had the budget and scope to rival any Final Fantasy title. Its sales were quite strong upon release, especially in North America, but they quickly petered out and the game never got a sequel.
Much like Legend of Legaia, The Legend of the Dragoon has a cult following that remembers it fondly, but the game never attained the same status as the series that inspired it.
Despite another pre-title cinematic, The Legend of Dragoon has a lengthy 7-minute introduction. However, when the player gains control, the game takes a rather blistering pace.
Chests containing items and the first save spot are found right away, and a series of scripted fights result in the first level-up and new ability — 5 milestones in 5 minutes.
Combat has the same load-masking as Final Fantasy and the text prints out very slowly, but the starting town isn’t overly large. There are some hidden items, but most of the time is taken up with an optional combat tutorial. Once it’s completed, the overworld map opens up leading immediately to the first dungeon in just over 20 minutes.
The protagonist’s next destination, Hellena Prison, is a much different beast from the forest path leading up to it. It’s a positively huge dungeon, composed of many interlocking maps that contain different elevation paths, numerous patrolling enemies, interactive elevators and cable cars, and lots of optional treasure.
Various narrative cutscenes play while exploring the dungeon, and the protagonist is eventually joined by two companions, one of whom can equip a superior piece of gear found earlier on. A boss tries to stop the party, but once dispatched, a new location on the overworld map opens up that contains a rest spot.
FTC: 1:12:40
Miscellaneous Points:
SquareSoft’s final PSX JRPG was a thematic and aesthetic return to the titles of the 4th console generation. It kept the engine of FF VII and FF VIII, but embraced the medieval Europe look, used cartoony character designs, and centred on a more grounded narrative.
It won various awards and remains Sakaguchi‘s favourite entry in the series, but it didn’t sell quite as well as its two predecessors.
FF IX’s intro is split into multiple FMVs: one before the title screen, one as soon as the game starts, and one after a clever mock-battle where the party rehearses for a play. This interspersing of short FMVs continues throughout the game, never taking control away from the player for too long.
An item is stolen in the first battle, and the game quickly transitions to a new companion via a point-of-view character switch. However, the only other milestone to come in the next hour is a save point.
Despite this, FF IX doesn’t feel slow.
The POV oscillates as the opening is presented through the eyes of various party members. Each character has their own goals, and these are accompanied by minigames and other challenges not captured by the milestones. When the party comes together, a level-up and first real boss battle take place.
Eventually the group attempts to escape via an airship, but it’s damaged and crash-lands in a forest. This is the first chance to equip new gear, rest, and delve into a dungeon. While exploring the dense woods, the first permanent ability is obtained before opening up to the overworld map.
FTC: 1:44:51
Miscellaneous Points:
One of the larger departures from JRPG conventions, Valkyrie Profile eschewed the typical 3rd person camera for a side-scrolling adventure filled with giant, photo realistic props and well animated character sprites.
This stage-like presentation applied to the narrative as well, focusing on extended character-development segments that took place in small, singular areas. The nature of the storyline itself was also a departure, revolving around a macabre, non-linear quest to shepherd the souls of great warriors to fight in the apocalyptic Ragnarok.
Valkyrie Profile received a remake, a handful of ports, a sequel, and some side games, and is a constant presence on most top 5th generation JRPG lists.
An option for the opening movie/prologue is present on the title menu, making the vague backstory entirely optional.
Once in the game proper, the prevalence of voice acting instantly makes itself apparent. All the cinematic events are fully voiced, accompanied by slowly printing text bubbles. The two are synced fairly well, but there’s a delay after each segment as if to make sure the player has enough time to read all the text.
The problem with this approach is that it’s much faster to read text rather than listen to the full VO, and since there’s no skipping of text until the voice clip finishes, all the scenes are filled with unnecessary pauses.
Early on in the opening cutscene the player obtains mobility, but the scripted sequence resumes immediately in the next room. The first battle takes place further into the segment, but it’s not until the 40 minutes mark that the player is no longer strictly railroaded.
When the overworld map opens up, the player can instantly save and travel to a tutorial dungeon. Upon arrival, all of the intro’s main characters become companions and the player gains access to the in-game menu. The menu doubles as a store for items and gear, and allows the player to upgrade their characters. That’s seven milestones all within a minute of each other.
About 20 minutes into the dungeon the first level-up occurs, and the boss is encountered 20 minutes later. It takes another 10 minutes or so to exit the dungeon and obtain the final resting milestone.
FTC: 1:28:36
Miscellaneous Points:
Unsurprisingly, the median times generally increased from 4th to 5th generation. However, I wasn’t expecting all but one to grow, and by so much: the majority of the milestones took 2-5 times longer to reach. This wasn’t the fault of the opening cinematics either as TTF (usually dictated by the mobility milestone), took only 2 minutes longer to reach.
The biggest relative jumps came with resting and saving, which I actually expected to take place sooner rather than later. With the proliferation of memory cards and a trend toward user-friendliness, I thought most titles would provide a safe area to experiment in and reload as required. This was still achieved with laughably easy encounters and the shifting party-recuperation to items, abilities, and cutscene transitions. Saving on the other hand was simply delayed due to longer opening segments.
Travel and dungeon milestones also increased dramatically, by a factor of 4 and 3 respectively. The main reason for this seemed to be a desire to constrain the player in more linear locations while building the narrative and doling out new gameplay elements.
Combat was the only milestone that took place earlier in the 5th generation than in the 4th. However, the boss battle milestone came in at a significant 45 minutes later — the single largest time-increase among all the milestones. This was possibly due to the greater breadth and depth of combat mechanics, which also impacted leveling up and obtaining new abilities as XP-gain was no longer the only way to upgrade characters.
Overall the mobility, item, level-up, and boss milestones stayed in the same order, while the combat, companion, ability, and gear milestones occurred earlier, with the save, rest, travel, and dungeon milestones being pushed further into the timeline.
The milestone spreads generally increased as well, with the shortest times being pushed up as the opening segments got more and more elaborate. The most interesting takeaway, though, was which of the longest milestones changed. These actually decreased for ability and companion while increasing for travel and level-up. This indicated a general trend of focusing more on narrative elements while introducing specialized game mechanics (party-based combat, unique abilities) before tackling an open, less linear world with more difficult challenges.
Somewhat surprisingly, some of the most groundbreaking entries in the genre came early on in the 5th generation: the epic CG-based presentation and cynical tone of FF VII, the marriage of huge sprites and colourful 3D in Breath of Fire III, the cinematic cameras and anime inspirations of Xenogears. Later titles — including ones not on this list — largely attempted to live up to the standards set by these first success stories.
Not all aesthetic upgrades had a smooth transition either. Memory management and loading times introduced delays to the still-prevalent random encounters, exacerbating the combat grind. Voice overs worked fine in FMVs, but were annoyingly repetitive when used as combat barks and ground against dialogue timing in text boxes.
The quantity of text didn’t seem to increase drastically, at least not to visual-novel levels, but was nonetheless a painful step back. Most dialogue remained modal, and many developers bizarrely insisted on slowing down the speed of text and preventing the player from skipping it.
Gameplay-wise, combat saw the biggest changes. Titles were no longer content with closely mimicking the Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy template. Half the games on this list allowed multiple hits with basic attacks in a single round, mimicking the combo dynamics of fighting games. Furthermore, each title seemed to introduce its own unique wrinkles to combat: fuel-management in Xenogears, body-part targeting in Legend of Legaia, elemental field-effects in Chrono Cross, guard-breaking Valyrie Profile, etc.
Combat considerations spread out beyond the standard HP/MP/status management as well. For example, Suikoden II severely limited rune customization and raw amount of spell options, FF VIII relied on its complex junctioning system, Chrono Cross allowed the player full magic customization while scaling spell-power and refilling all spells after combat, etc.
These systems provided a lot of extra flexibility and allowed more meaningful progression and experimentation. However, the added complexity came at the cost of a higher barrier of entry. Despite being relatively familiar with these titles, I had to refresh my memory with manuals and carefully read in-game tutorials to get a good grip on the mechanics. Exploring a JRPG was no longer jumping in and simply figuring out which spells worked best in which situations.
An unfortunate trend that also emerged was the obfuscation of game elements for the purpose of selling strategy guides. Min-maxing the hidden bonuses awarded by the masters in Breath of Fire III or getting the most out of upgrading party members to Odin’s liking in Valkyrie Profile was not something the player could figure out just by playing the game.
Finally, it’s worth noting that as JRPGS began to implement elements outside the 12 milestones I captured, they spread them out throughout the overall experience. Suikoden II is a great example of this as its duels, large-scale SRPG battles, stronghold maintenance, gambling minigames, Richard’s detective investigations, etc., all took place at different parts of the game after the 2 hour limit.
I expect to see more of this type of pacing in the next generation, as well as a smaller reliance on old-school abstractions, e.g., separate battle arenas, overworld maps, turn-based combat, etc. I have a rough idea of which titles to cover that still fit my original criteria, but feel free to comment and mention which titles you’d like to see included!
]]>Having grown up with JRPGs, it’s somewhat surprising how rarely I play them these days. That desire for a wondrous epic is still there, but pursuing new titles usually results in a feeling of slogging through manufactured bloat. The introductory segments are often filled with painfully-gated progression, overenthusiastic tutorials, and a juvenile narrative. In the limited instances where the opening is great, the overall game-loop tends to sputter out into protracted tedium. In either case, I quickly lose interest.
This general reaction to modern JPRGs must have a lot to do with growing up and having less free time, a lower tolerance for anime tropes, and no emotional attachment to the new series. But hasn’t the genre improved overall? Weren’t the older games just grind-fests burdened with copious amounts of random battles?
To help answer that question, I thought it would be interesting to quantify some of the less subjective elements of JRPGs, starting with the 4th generation of consoles.
My approach was to replay the first 2 hours of the more renowned JRPGs released in North America and measure the amount of time it took to reach various gameplay-milestones in each one. To avoid the more contentious titles occasionally placed under the JRPG umbrealla, I only included games with multiple controllable party members, a turn-based battle system, and a character-driven narrative.
Despite having played many of these games in the past, I only had a vague recollection of most and attempted to emulate a first-time, completionist experience. I talked to every NPC, entered every building, brought up every menu, and skipped no cutscenes or dialogue. I did, however, increase text-display and walking speeds wherever possible.
My main goal was to measure two elements, Time to Freedom (TTF), and Time to Comfort (TTC). I define Time to Freedom as the first time the player gets to interact with the game in any way beyond simply advancing cutscenes, and Time to Comfort as the amount of time it takes to experience all applicable gameplay-milestones within a 2 hour limit. These two metrics are meant to show how quickly the player can start experimenting with the game, and how long it takes to experience its main mechanics and gain a certain sense of mastery over them. Additionally, I noted each game’s Freedom to Comfort (FTC), defined as the difference between TTC and TTF.
The common gameplay milestones consisted of the following:
A few other elements such as vehicles and minigames were not included as they were either not common enough or typically appeared in the mid to late stages of a game. In addition, I provided a bit of context for each title, highlighting what made it stand out from other JRPGs, and contributed a bit of analysis on the milestone results.
Finally, I am limiting each console cycle to 10 games and sorting them chronologically by original release date (usually in Japan) in order to give a better idea of the genre’s progression.
My first JRPG and a landmark title in the genre. It injected a bit of dynamism to turn-based combat via the Active Time Battle system, and managed to take a narrative step forward by creating plot-related story arcs for all party members. It’s also known for having a fairly brisk pace, partially credited to lots of content being cut.
Further cuts were made to the North American release removing various items and characters skills, but even this eroded version was ultimately deemed as too complex by SquareSoft. Consequently this led to the development of the much-maligned Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest in order to introduce JRPGs to the West. Mystic Quest fared even worse, but eventually Final Fantasy IV gained enough popularity to warrant various re-releases, a remake, and even an episodic (albeit not as fondly received) sequel.
I remembered Final Fantasy IV’s intro as rather long, but apparently it didn’t even last 5 minutes. Part of this might be the fact that dialogue popups (unusually located at the top of the screen, not the bottom) appear without any delays, and multiple characters’ lines can be displayed in the box at one time. The TTF is still a bit deceptive as once the mobility milestone is hit, the player has to sit through various cutscenes and expository sequences before being deposited on the overworld map.
Once the restraints are fully off, FF IV hits an excellent pace in terms of both gameplay and narrative. Random battles are fairly frequent, but running away is always an option — with the additional risk of losing money — and level-grinding is not required. Party members come and go very quickly, and the plot continuously unfolds at each turn.
The only outlier is the first equipment upgrade that comes unusually late as the weapons/armour shop is closed in the first town, and there’s no gear to collect in the first dungeon.
FTC: 32:43
Miscellaneous Points:
I was a little surprised to see the original Lunar appear so early on the list, but in retrospect it makes sense. By 1991, various “multimedia” heavy games such as Cosmic Fantasy were coming out on Japanese PCs and the CD-ROM² System.
Lunar: TSS was the Mega CD’s flagship JRPG, and its North American publisher, Working Designs, created a port known for a fair amount of changes. Extra humour and pop culture references were sprinkled in, and the packaging itself included various extras to position it as a premium title. The Silver Star was successful enough to turn Lunar into a franchise, spawning a sequel, various spinoffs, and multiple ports and remakes.
Despite the multimedia experience being a large selling point, Lunar: TSS started off fairly quickly, mainly due to its voiced and animated intro playing before the title screen. From there, it took very little time to get some items, a few companions, and go out exploring. Menus and dialogues displayed instantly so there were no unnecessary delays, although movement was a bit tricky as the game auto-pathed whenever the party ran into a collidable obstacle. Keeping a direction pressed down made the party hug the wall and keep going, making it at times difficult to properly line up with interactive elements such as NPCs and treasure chests, especially when they were close together.
Combat included movement and attack animations so it was a bit slower than its contemporaries, but it didn’t drag on with overly involved spell sequences. Random encounters were truly random in terms of frequency, but the overworld was littered with HP/MP restoring statues so I was never in any real danger.
Lunar: TSS’ only outlier was its first boss battle, which came fairly late into the game. It was also quite difficult and required a bit of grinding as the boss was only susceptible to magic and the protagonist unlocked his spell-potential right before the boss’ dungeon. The remakes of the game changed this up quite a bit, adding more boss battles and altering the narrative-driven party composition.
FTC: 1:51:16
Miscellaneous Points:
Phantasy Star was Sega’s main JRPG for their other console, the Mega Drive, and The End of the Millenium was the final entry in the series. Despite not relying on a CD-ROM for storage, it featured lots of animated characters and enemies, and copious amounts of pixel art stills for its manga-esque cinematic sequences.
The high production values and epic scope did a lot to wash away the negative reception of Phantasy Star III, but it wasn’t enough to keep the series going. The Phantasy Star IP was eventually used again, but this time for a series of real-time, squad-based online games rather than a traditional JRPG.
PS IV’s dialogues were printed out one letter at a time in a text box that was only two lines high, its menus popped up one above the other and all closed individually when dismissed, and much of the environment could be investigated for flavour-text that bogged down a completionist playthrough. Despite all these elements, PS IV was the second fastest game to hit all the milestones, and it could’ve easily taken first spot if I had played the games slightly differently.
The intro was brisk and started the player off in a town with an inn, an item shop, and a short dungeon with a boss at the end. Saving could be done anywhere, and another character joined the cast before the first dungeon was entered.
Combat was filled with animations, but there was no need for movement like in Lunar and all attacks played out very quickly. In addition, there was an option to use “macros” in battles, pre-defined actions for each character that played out automatically.
Once the local problems were dealt with, the overworld map became available and a trek to a nearby optional town provided gear upgrades. Random battles seemed more rare on the overworld map than in dungeons, and they never happened in quick succession. Combined with a quick walking speed, PS IV feels like a very rapid JRPG, and my milestone measurements seemed to back that up.
FTC: 18:38
Miscellaneous Points:
One of most renowned JPRGs of all time, Final Fantasy VI continues to vie for the top spot in the series and the console generation as as whole. Unlike Lunar and Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy continued to avoid combat animations and pixel art stills for its presentation, instead relying on complex backdrops, larger sprites with a fair amount of custom animations, and all sorts of Mode 7 trickery.
The complexity of the narrative and gameplay also increased to levels much beyond its contemporaries, with a large cast of characters, loads of optional content, and numerous cinematic set-pieces.
FF VI continued the new trend of starting off with a short dungeon crawl that covers a variety of gameplay elements without overwhelming the player. The first segment introduced movement, combat, saving, leveling up, items (the first one I got was actually a random drop following a battle), and ended with a relatively easy boss fight.
Once the boss was defeated, the game switched to a different playable character, a motif unique to FF VI as the game deemphasized the singular protagonist. The overall experience was also a lot more scripted than other JRPGs as there wasn’t as hard a line between cutscene and freedom; some of the enemies were present on the map and quickly yelled out before attacking, the camera briefly panned to show forces pursuing the player, party members were given short barks in combat to hint at a tactic against the boss, etc.
A party-splitting minigame was up next with a band of Moogles forming three distinct player-groups. Switching between these could be used to cut off slowly moving enemy parties, while the combat itself previewed various weapon attacks as the Moogles were all equipped with a variery of armaments. This sequence also provided an early gear upgrade as I managed to use the Steal ability to obtain a MithrilKnife.
After the starting characters both joined up, the overworld map opened up (with a handy restorative bucket nearby) and the game-proper began.
FTC: 28:26
Miscellaneous Points:
Nintendo’s own shot at an in-house JRPG was typically atypical. Instead of a vaguely medieval setting with the occasional firearm or spaceship, Earthbound elected for modern-day quirkiness. The game was like a funhouse mirror version of America steeped in references to Western media that were woefully outdated for its target audience, e.g., the Beatles and Blues Brothers, 50’s sci-fi flicks, the Little Rascals, etc.
The premise was a bit of a hard sale, and the odd marketing campaign didn’t seem to help, but eventually Earthbound gained a fan base that — while not the largest — has to be one of most dedicated out there.
Earthbound was the first and only title on the list not to hit all the gameplay milestones within the 2 hour limit. It started off quite briskly, coming in at or below the median for TTF, item and equipment acquisition, combat, leveling up, and gaining a new ability. However, overall progression had a slower pace than its contemporaries.
Text in Earthbound is printed out in small comic book balloons, and while it was generally fun and charming, there was also quite a bit of it. Combat used a lot of printed descriptions as well, and the higher frequency for missing attacks (both by the player and the enemies) extended the average battle duration. Walking speed was also fairly slow, and combined with large maps filled with NPCs, exploration had a bit of a languid feel to it. It was quite fitting for the happy-go-lucky setting, but it did put the game on the slower side of things.
Enemies were visible on the map and could be largely avoided — and they even started running away from me once I reached a high enough level — so replaying the game could go much faster if one simply made a beeline for the next plot point. The only caveat here is that I actually had to do some grinding to defeat the second boss; it wasn’t strictly necessary, but I died on my first attempt and didn’t want to rely on luck to continue.
FTC: NA
Miscellaneous Points:
A rarity amongst JRPGs: a direct sequel that retains the same setting and links to the previous game’s events and characters. Eternal Blue also upped the ante on the multimedia content with more cinematics and voiced content, and much like The Silver Star, received various remake-ports. Despite this, it was the last main entry in the series and only received side-story sequels of dubious quality.
In many ways, Lunar: EB was a preview of the next generation’s JRPGs. There was more text — with NPCs often rambling on for a while, and having different things to say a second time around or when the plot advanced — more cinematics, more voice overs, etc., and a lot of it unskipable.
The game began with a lengthy intro that was more than twice as long as any other game on the list. Things picked up right after, though, with the ability to save and rest, access to the overworld map, random combat, a gear upgrade, and a new companion. This whole segment would’ve gone even faster if it wasn’t for one relatively big problem: loading times. Every instance of combat, which was already on the slower side, was preceded and followed by a noticeable load time. The unusually low success rate for running away from battles exacerbated this issue.
Since the party started off with a fair amount of items, it actually took a while to reach the first dungeon and obtain new ones. Following some more lengthy cinematics and traversal, the first boss appeared leaving only one more milestone on the list: gaining a new ability.
In Lunar: EB, there actually is no automatic unlocking of any new spells. Instead, magic experience points are gained following each battle (which in the North American port are also used to save), and these are used to upgrade individual abilities. I started off by strengthening a few characters’ spells, but refrained from using MXP until I got close to the 2 hour limit. At that point, I focused on upgrading the protagonists abilities, and had just enough points to morph one of the old spells into a new one, and gain a brand new spell as well.
FTC: 1:48:35
Miscellaneous Points:
Neverland is best known for its Rune Factory series, but Lufia II is by far my favourite game from the developer. It also filled a bit of a niche as Dragon Quest titles never made it out to the West during the 4th generation and the two series shared many similarities: the art style, the combat, the almost-episodic nature to the narrative, the gambling minigames, churches being used for saving and curing ailments, the ability to recruit certain monsters into the party, etc.
However, Lufia II built on top of those elements with a bit of a kitchen-sink approach, adding a roguelike step-turn system to its Zelda-inspired dungeons, providing equipment that granted unique abilities, and even included an optional but giant randomly-generated maze.
Aside from the last two gameplay milestones, Lufia II was the quickest game to get going. The protagonist walked into a shop, exchanged a few words with a girl, and we were off!
Text was shown in comic book balloons — with characters’ inner thoughts displayed using a different border and notch — but plenty of it could fit in these balloons as the number of lines adjusted to the dialogue itself. The text display speed was also set to fastest by default; the only time I recall ever seeing that in a JRPG. Walking speed was quick as well, and enemies could be seen and often avoided in dungeons (random encounters existed on the overworld map, but didn’t happen too).
The starting town provided items, equipment, and spells for purchase, as well as an inn. Stepping outside brought me to the overworld map, and an introductory dungeon just to the south granted the first level up. It took a few more towns and dungeons to fight the first boss and gain the first companion, but Lufia II generally progressed at a very fast pace.
FTC: 54:34
Miscellaneous Points:
SquareSoft and Enix were the two largest JRPG competitors during the 4th generation, so it was quite a boon for SquareSoft to welcome Yuji Horri (Dragon Quest’s creator who was apparently freelancing at the time) and Akira Toriyama (the concept artist for Dragon Quest and creator of Dragon Ball) into the fold. Expectations for the Dream Team‘s project were quite high, but considering Chrono Trigger is often cited as the best JRPG of all time, it’s safe to say they were more than met.
In some ways, Chrono Trigger felt like the streamlined JRPG that FF: Mystic Quest always wanted to be. The party was limited to 3 characters, the overworld map was visually compressed and had no random encounters, equipment was reduced to 4 slots, only restorative and stat-upgrading items were available, and the dungeons tended to be fairly small. Despite this, the game didn’t start railroaded to an excessively linear path.
Chrono Trigger’s short opening let the player instantly visit two different towns, rest & save, purchase items and equipment, visit a small forest to fight enemies and level up, and partake in various minigames. To move the plot forward, a new companion was met at the fair, and one optional boss battle later all the gameplay milestones were hit in just under 20 minutes; perhaps the streamlining of the game also helped to remove a lot of common filler?
FTC: 18:28
Miscellaneous Points:
Despite the Mother series’ relative success, Nintendo reached out to SquareSoft to make a JRPG starring their flagship mascot (perhaps wanting to avoid further conflict with Miyamoto who scoffed at using CG graphics following Donkey Kong Country’s success). The relationship between the two companies soon soured, but Super Mario RPG itself was both a critical and commercial hit, and managed to morph into two individual sub-series for Nintendo.
Just like FF VI, Super Mario RPG started off with a short, railroaded dungeon that set up the main premise of the game while letting the player get comfortable with basic combat and exploration. A few tutorials then followed introducing resting, saving, items, and overworld exploration; further milestones were a bit more spread out.
Perhaps wanting to avoid overwhelming newcomers to the genre, all numerics in Super Mario RPG were on the smaller side. This included max character levels, which were restricted to 30 rather than the more typical 99. This meant that leveling up, and by extension gaining new abilities, was a bit more spread out. Despite this, Super Mario RPG still hit all its milestones in well under 45 minutes.
FTC: 38:52
Miscellaneous Points:
Despite its humble roots, Pokémon went on to become the most successful JRPG series of all time. In fact, a whole separate company was spun out to manage the IP, and it’s still hailed as the highest grossing media franchise in the world beating out such juggernauts as Star Wars, Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter, and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. A trend with the series has always been to split each entry into two slightly different titles, and eventually put out a combined version. That’s what I decided to cover here: Pokémon Yellow, the merging of the original Red/Green releases.
Pokémon started off very quickly, coming in at or below the median for mobility, resting & saving, obtaining an item, combat, traveling, leveling up, gaining a new ability, and having a companion join the party. However, Pokémon didn’t map onto all these milestones as directly as other JPRGs.
I considered the first companion to be the first Pokémon I was given. These pocket-monsters can be swapped in and out at will and can’t be equipped with any gear, so they don’t function quite like your typical party member. The protagonist has no equipment either, so I waited until the first stat-boosting badge was obtained before toggling that milestone. The game also lacked typical bosses, so in this category I substituted in the first encounter with a Pokémon Trainer who had multiple creatures to dispatch. However, because their minions are not completely unique and there are so many Pokémon Trainers in the game, it might be more accurate to describe them as minibosses.
It could also be argued that the wilderness areas between towns all constitute individual dungeons. They’re certainly deliberate from a level design point of view, and contain their own groups of Pokémon, Pokémon Trainers, and treasures. The main reason I didn’t count them as dungeons, though, was that much like Super Mario RPG, they served as common transitions between distinct locations rather than being unique destinations in and of themselves.
The “Gotta catch ’em all!” slogan of Pokémon also led to an interesting dynamic when it came to grinding. An experienced player can easily capture and upgrade the Pokémon most suited for exploiting the weaknesses of the upcoming enemies and bosses. However, a new player or a completionist will spend vast amounts of time trying to encounter, capture, and level up all the available creatures, slowing down overall progression quite a bit.
FTC: 1:53:09
Miscellaneous Points:
10 games make for an extremely small sample size, but timing these titles still proved quite eye-opening. I generally suspected that combat, items, and equipment milestones would come first, followed by overworld travel, resting, and saving. Once this initial loop was established — giving the player freedom to upgrade and recover as needed — I figured the next steps would involve delving into a dungeon and fighting the first boss. Some plot exposition would then follow, a new companion would join the group, and the old character(s) would learn a few new tricks in combat.
Things didn’t quite go that way.
Resting & saving was already an early-game staple, while most titles either began in a dungeon where a boss awaited, or took a long way to build up to those encounters. Acquisition of equipment was something I just flat out got wrong; getting new gear was a lengthy process, often coming in after new abilities were obtained.
The medians for all the milestones came pretty quickly, but the actual spots at which the milestones occurred varied quite a bit.
Subtracting TTF, no game took longer than 10 minutes to provide basic movement and game saving, no longer than 20 minutes to hit the first battle and level-up, and no longer than 30 minutes for a chance to rest and get some items. These six milestones seemed to form a core of 4th Generation JRPGs regardless of their personal takes on the genre.
The other six milestones were a lot more spread out, taking up to 120+ minutes to be reached. However, what’s worth noting here is that any of the milestones — including these six that typically occurred further on into the game — could take place as early as the first 5 minutes.
The most shocking aspect of the timing, though, was the TTF itself. I thought that some openings would last up to 30 minutes, but the longest one wasn’t even half of that. In fact, nine games started off in under 5 minutes, with most only taking a minute or so to get going.
Part of the reason for this was an interesting trend to play an opening cinematic before the title screen, or via an attract-mode. These would often set up the setting itself, leaving only character introductions once the game itself began.
Grinding proved to be mostly a non-issue, at least in the first 2 hours of each game. Even more surprisingly, random encounters themselves were already being diminished. Not only was combat not as obnoxiously frequent as I had feared, many games were either showing enemies on the maps or experimenting with that approach, e.g., the Pokémon Trainers in Pokémon Yellow and the guards aboard Leo’s ship in Lunar: Eternal Blue.
Another unexpected element was the proliferation of minigames. I thought these mostly started appearing in the 5th generation, but they often popped up in this one as well, e.g., the slots in Lufia II, the carnival games in Chrono Trigger, the collection-races of Super Mario RPG, etc.
Considering combat wasn’t quite as unavoidable as some might think, I expect things to slow down a bit in the next console generation. There will be more cinematics, more voice overs, and more text; as odd as it might sound, a game’s script was one of the many things limited by cartridge size. I already have a rough list of which JRPGs to cover next, but feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions!
]]>When Sonic the Hedgehog was first released, the game was marketed as a speedy anti-Mario. Instead of slowly plodding through small, geometric levels, Sonic blazed up and down rolling hills in large, open areas.
Speed wasn’t just a shallow thrill either as the game did a great job of encouraging players to move forward:
The upcoming Sonic Mania seems to be embracing this speed element, even adding a new move to Sonic’s repertoire: the drop-dash. It might prove fairly useful too — the old Sonic always had a bit of a slow acceleration curve — but I hope the back-to-roots approach also pays homage to the original’s precision traversal, improvisational maneuvering, and optional exploration.
In other words, the slower-paced elements of Sonic.
I’m not sure if pinball was a big influence on the inaugural title (beyond the bumper-themed Spring Yard Zone), but it’s an apt comparison. Sonic’s gameplay mimicked both the thrilling momentum of rocketing around a board’s playfield, and the precise, nail-biting navigation through its clustered obstacles.
In an interview with Game Developer magazine, Hirokazu Yasuhara, the chief level designer for Sonic the Hedgehog, elucidated on his design philosophy. What struck me in particular was his description of creating smaller-scale challenges:
…A more short-distance goal, meanwhile, would be if you’re in a baseball game; your goal is to get on base, and there are any number of simple, linear ways to achieve that goal. An example of a middle-distance goal would be if you run into a bridge in the forest that you can’t gain access to — something I do a lot in games. Maybe you have to do a sequence of jumps to reach it, but it’s visible, at least…
These sorts of short and medium distance goals are a constant source of interruptions to the player, but they also create gameplay variety and change up the overall pace. The original Sonic the Hedgehog is largely remembered for its speed and attitude, but it also contained numerous elements designed to slow down the player and create these mini-challenges.
As the quote above alludes to, one of the best ways to make the player stop and consider their surroundings is to tease them with things just outside of their reach. Sonic’s levels are quite big and their intertwining paths linked by speed-ramps, automatically moving platforms, vertical springs, and all sorts of other gadgets that facilitate traversal. Changing “lanes” in Sonic is fairly common, whether on purpose or just by going with the flow, and this teaches players that there are extras to collect if they don’t just run directly to the end of the level.
Some of these extras are also fairly tricky to reach, especially the ones that require exploratory platforming or moving through hidden paths.
The incentive for extra collectibles is fairly consistent throughout the game. The more rings the player possesses, the easier it is to absorb a hit, and extra shields and temporary invincibility powerups provide further protection. Collecting enough rings also grants extra lives, and a chance to enter the special stage.
In these minigames, Sonic is always in his ball mode and the stage slowly rotates around him. It’s a constant fight against the tide as Sonic’s mobility is severely diminished, and getting to the Chaos Emerald involves patiently navigating to its cage.
Once discovered, Sonic must press against the individual diamonds that surround the Emerald in order to gradually change their colours. In Breakout fashion, once the all the colours are cycled down, the diamonds disappear and open a path to the prize inside. Obtaining all the Chaos Emeralds actually alters the game’s ending, so there’s a concrete incentive for collecting them throughout the game.
Most of the enemies in the game die after a single jump/spin attack, and the collision never slows Sonic down. However, a few of them contain unique properties seemingly designed to make the player pause, or even backtrack to a safer spot.
Unlike enemies, hazards can never be defeated and their timing isn’t always synced up with a straightforward run-through of a level.
Much to the chagrin of speedrunners, parkouring through these obstacles is not always an option. Sonic has a limited moveset, lacking wall-jumps, dashes, gliding, etc., so often the only way to get through unscathed is to simply wait for the right opening.
In addition to obstacles that are dangerous to touch, the game also contains various elements that slow down, stop, or even invert Sonic’s momentum.
The most common traversal objects are automatically moving platforms that allow Sonic to get to an area he otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach. These are essentially “always on,” but their scripted nature means that when the player gets to them, the object might be somewhere else, or in an inactive state, requiring a short wait for it to become available. In addition, the actual process of using these objects is usually slower than Sonic’s regular running and jumping speed.
Player-activated objects exist as well, requiring various types of actions to manually initiate.
Not all traversal objects are automatic or activated directly, which is where switches come in. Located on the floors of various zones, these allow Sonic to lower bridges, open doorways, and generally create new traversal paths. Switches rarely affect anything off-screen so they don’t cause much confusion or backtracking, but they do require the player to slow down and execute an extra step before moving on.
Exclusive to Marble Zone, blocks are unique in that they’re the only objects that can be slowly maneuvered around the map by Sonic. This results in a variety block-based gameplay that’s mandatory to completing the zone.
The majority of destructible elements in Sonic the Hedgehog come in the form of crumbling platforms that encourage forward movement rather than slowing it. However, there are a few specific exceptions to this.
Once again these objects are only found in Marble Zone, and while they slow Sonic down by providing extra individual barriers, busting through them is also a fun mechanic that’s a bit different from the rest of the game.
Perhaps the most blunt-force way of preventing Sonic from building up speed is limiting his available real estate. All boss encounters — aside from the one in Labyrinth Zone, which is just a race against the tide — do this by forcing the encounter to take place on a single, non-scrolling screen.
While it’s easy to assume that the series evolved past these speed-bumps, the original’s sequels — largely the most beloved Sonic titles — contained them as well. The games were streamlined, providing shorter pauses and more opportunities for building up speed, but they were still filled with crazy gadgets that facilitated movement and exploration, interesting enemies with unique abilities and properties, and lots of secrets that helped the player progress and unlock the ultimate ending(s).
An excessive focus on speed was probably a major reason for the decline of the Sonic-platformer (at least in terms of gameplay), but the issue was also a bit more nuanced. The problem wasn’t just how much of a backseat other gameplay took to speed, but also how the speed elements themselves were implemented.
In recent Sonic games building velocity was no longer an organic part of a level, but rather its main feature. Maps turned into one-way obstacle courses, lacking in interesting challenges while forcibly rocketing Sonic ahead. The thrill of the speed became routine, and it turned the experience into a somewhat passive and boring rollercoaster ride. While that sort of design methodology can work in some genres — it certainly did with the the lane-runner Sonic Dash — it just doesn’t make for very good platformers, 2D or 3D.
]]>The Call of the Cthulhu setting is very much about the unimaginable terrors of the cosmos. Humankind is fairly insignificant against this backdrop, and the notable races and entities range tremendously in motives and capabilities. Although Dark Corners of the Earth has its fair share of grunt enemies, trying to distill all of the Mythos into common FPS foes with movement speeds, line-of-sight ranges, HP values, weapon weaknesses, etc., wouldn’t have been true to the source material.
Thankfully Headfirst Productions didn’t go that route, instead focusing on how to best implement the iconic monstrosities as they appeared in the original stories and Chaosium’s Pen & Paper campaigns. Here are my three favourite examples:
Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God.
During a naval approach on the cultist stronghold, Deep Ones ambush the fleet. They pour onto the ships and many succumb to the brutal assault. Dark wizards further complicate matters by summoning gigantic waves that tilt the vessels nearly vertical; a handrail needs to be quickly grabbed in order to avoid certain death.
Eventually Father Dagon himself makes an appearance, bursting from the cold depths and latching onto the ship occupied by the protagonist. He shakes it up and down in an attempt to sink it, and periodically reemerges on different sides to swipe at the player. The only thing that can slow Dagon down is the ship’s massive cannon, and it takes a few point-blank shots to do so.
The first time I played the game, the protagonist decided he couldn’t handle fighting the ancient behemoth. By staring at Dagon for too long, I made Jack’s insanity meter go through the roof and he shot himself on the spot. It was quite shocking, and perfectly conveyed the dread and horror the Chtuhlhu monstrosities are meant to instill.
It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming.
The Marsh family Refinery is filled with various dangers, but none more threatening than the Shoggoths. Roiling, pulsating masses of eyeballs and tentacles, the beasts serve more as an environmental threat and series of puzzles than a standalone enemy.
When first encountered, the Shoggoths are summoned into giant vats via an electrical stimulus. This energy discharge can also be used to send them away, but their hideous, lashing tentacles make that a difficult task. If done successfully, the mass quickly spills out into a corridor following the protagonist. It fills it entirely at a frightening speed and can easily overwhelm if a bunch of doors aren’t bolted shut in time. Even that is only a temporary delay, and the Shoggoths soon burst through and drain away, leaving behind a corrosive trail.
Perhaps the most terrifying sequence follows with the player crawling through a series of air ducts that begin to buckle and cave in. The Shoggoths throw themselves at the outside of the frail passageway in an attempt to crush anything inside. The final encounter involves a temporary respite through venting hot steam and flooding a room with explosive gas, but it never quite feels like a victory.
What makes the Shoggoths so unnerving isn’t their absolute resistance to the player’s weapons, but rather their utter alienness. They’re tools used by the Marshes, but they can’t be understood or reasoned with, only prodded. It’s hard to tell where one Shoggoth ends and another begins, and their behaviour reflects this as well. At times they recklessly pounce on Jack, while at others they seem entirely disinterested, or even asleep. Battling the Shoggoths feels like a futile struggle against an overwhelming foe, but also an uncaring one.
They were only partly material and had the power of aerial motion, despite the absence of wings. A monstrous plasticity and temporary lapses of visibility, whistling noises, and colossal footprints made up of five circular toe marks seemed also to be associated with them.
The Great Race of Yith (very well implemented in its own right) warns the player of the Flying Polyps via an eerie flashback. The sequence speaks of advanced energy weapons driving the polyps into underground chasms, but also foretells of their eventual uprising. The polyps are destined to break through their seals and wipe out the current iteration of the Yithians despite the race’s tremendous technological achievements.
Late in the game, a tortured Deep One confesses to his kind’s fear of the tunnels below the city, but the player is forced to traverse them in order to reach Mother Hydra. Along the way an ancient weapon is discovered in a partly destroyed Yithian chamber, and soon after a cracked, basalt seal. As the protagonist drops in and makes his way across a precipitous drop, the screen begins to shake. A howling, seemingly localized tornado pushes through, and not one but two Flying Polyps emerge.
The tumorous mouths of the polyps gnash as they scream and blow, threatening to send Jack plummeting to his doom. During the whole fight they home in on the player — getting alarmingly close to the camera — which only accentuates the sense of danger and disgust. However, the Yithian weapon does affect them, wrapping their bodies in electric coils, but it takes quite a few shots before they slink down into the abyss. Even then it’s not so much a victory as plain survival, largely bestowed through the Great Race’s weaponry.
]]>Diablo is one of the most critically and commercially acclaimed videogame franchises of all time. It has spawned numerous “clones,” and its gameplay conventions have been adapted across multiple genres. The latest entry in the series, Diablo III, boasts the honour of being the fastest selling PC game of all time and the best selling PC game of all time.
So what makes the series so special? Almost to a fault, Diablo games are described as being incredibly addictive. That’s a fairly vague assertion, though, so I figured it’d be interesting to take a closer look at the original game and get a little closer to nailing down its je ne sais quois.
Various sources claim that Diablo started off as a turn-based roguelike, which makes sense considering the numerous genre tropes it employs.
Aesthetically it was not only a big step up from ASCII-based visuals, but it also outshone most other CRPGs of the era. Diablo ran at a 640×480 resolution and featured a dark, Gothic world rendered entirely in CG. Everything in the game animated smoothly, playable characters changed appearance based on equipment, a rudimentary lighting system helped set the mood, and a plethora of spell effects and item icons created a much more impressive presentation than that of its dungeon-crawling brethren.
Diablo was also fully voiced, and its music — especially the theme of Tristram — is fondly remembered to this day. More subtly, the game featured excellent sound design. This is most evident in the item drops that are represented by a spinning graphical icon, a whooshing sound effect, and an additional audio clip played when the item hits the ground. The sounds differed based on the item type that was spawned, and were clearer, louder, and longer in duration than all the other sound effects in the game. These cues ensured that spawned treasures were rarely missed and greatly enhanced the Pavlovian effects of loot-hunting.
From a gameplay perspective, Diablo retained many defining aspects of a roguelike despite being a real-time game. Randomization was present in level layouts, monster type and placement, item generation, and even the available quests. Character classes shared the same basic statistics and could all learn a large swath of common spells, but possessed unique abilities and statistical progression. Shrines and consumable items provided further boosts and ailments, and inventory management was big part of the experience (even gold had to be accommodated for, one 5,000-coin stack at a time).
However, Diablo wasn’t quite as unforgiving as a typical roguelike. There was no instadeath, and saving/loading was allowed at any point. If the player died while playing online, they would respawn in town and get the chance to retrieve their equipment from their corpse. There was even an option to restart the game at any time, retaining all of the character’s armament and upgrades.
None of the items severely handicapped the player either, and it was possible to equip unidentified items to benefit from their statistical boosts while foregoing their special abilities. A superimposed minimap was an option as well, and compensated for the more zoomed-in viewpoint compared to typical roguelikes.
And of course there was multiplayer.
During the time of Diablo’s release, multiplayer usually meant configuring ports and IP addresses. Much like early server-browsers such as GameSpy Arcade and Xfire, Diablo’s Battle.net circumvented the issue by providing an easy graphical interface for getting online. The gameplay adjustments worked remarkably well too, with all monsters simply being given twice as much health for every player in the game. Granted friendly fire was always on, but this was still a very user-friendly online experience for the time.
All in all, Diablo was a very sleek package, and miles ahead of what one would expect from just a graphical roguelike.
In large part Diablo consisted of lumbering around Tristram selling loot, healing, swapping equipment, and getting ready for the next excursion. Since these pit-stops were not the meat of the game, I decided to limit my observations to the actual dungeon exploration. I played as a Warrior and endeavoured to kill every enemy, open every container, pick up every item, and generally explore every corner of every map before moving on to the next area.
As it turned out, 8 hours of hacking and slashing was just enough time to complete the whole game.
Below is a graph that illustrates the amount of time (in minutes) devoted to each map of the dungeon, how many trips it took to eliminate all the enemies and pick up all the loot, and how many experience levels my Warrior gained on each floor.
The purple marks indicate special maps that were not entirely randomized and served as arenas for boss battles.
Right off the bat it’s obvious that the amount of time required for each map climbed steadily, but still varied noticeably from floor to floor. The major differences were caused by the static maps, but even without these there was enough variation to prevent the experience from feeling wholly homogenized. The shortest map clocked in at 7.5 minutes and the longest at 31 minutes, with the average coming in at 19.4 minutes. However, it’s also worth noting that the variations were in part due to my Warrior refusing to use the teleport spell (making backtracking more time consuming in some layouts) and combat difficulty (needing to spend time kiting enemies and running away to recharge health and mana).
The amount of trips required to fully explore each floor was more consistent, but this is more indicative of the loot-hauling than anything else. Having played a sturdy character with a focus on health-regeneration, retreating to Tristram in order to recuperate wasn’t an issue until the very end of the game. Instead, the trips were a direct result of inventory limitations and my determination to collect every spawned item. The relative consistency of the amount of trips indicates that despite unique layouts, monster populations, treasure chest distributions, etc., each floor produced a similar number of items throughout the game. In total, the smallest amount of trips to clear a floor was 1 and the largest 5, with the average coming in at 3.1.
Finally, much like the amount of trips, the experience progression was fairly consistent. On average, 1.3 levels were gained for every dungeon floor. This is noteworthy as none of the statistical progression in Diablo involves randomness. Each level-up grants 5 points that the player can distribute among 4 attributes, and each character class has a specific starting and maximum number for each attribute. This results in all the uniqueness of a character build coming exclusively from items — via equipment and spells — thereby putting further emphasis on loot-drops.
Overall Diablo is split up into 4 zones, each one consisting of 4 dungeon floors. There’s a steady progression of new monsters and map objects as the player delves further underground, but the interesting part is that each zone has a slightly different approach to generating its layout. This helps to give all the areas a unique atmosphere and even has some implications on exploration and combat mechanics.
Another interesting factor is that the availability of quests is randomized as well. This is quite substantial as it means certain characters and bosses — and by extension entire maps — cannot be encountered in a single playthrough. Combined with the ability to start the game anew while retaining character progression, it’s clear that Diablo was designed with replayability in mind.
Item spawning is often credited as being Diablo’s “secret sauce,” but all of its algorithms have been meticulously catalogued by devoted fans. According to the compiled data, entities that drop items follow slightly different formulas that help give them defining characteristics: chests drop 0-3 treasures based on size, sarcophagi can contain hidden monsters, weapon racks always yield armaments, etc. However, it’s defeated enemies that make up the bulk of the loot. Let’s take a look:
Regular Monsters:
Gold: 30.3%
Item: 10.7%
Nothing: 59.0%
*Some monster types (Winged Fiends and Hork Spawns) never drop items.Unique Monsters:
Item: 100%
*Unique monsters always drop an item, and it can either be a book or an item that can take on a prefix and/or suffix (or be unique).
Well, that’s rather simple, isn’t it? Over half the time nothing drops. When it does, it’s usually gold. There’s only a 10.7% chance an item drops from a regular monster, and special ones always drop good loot.
Aside from quest MacGuffins, items are either consumable or equipable. Consumables consist of health and/or mana recharging potions, stat-raising elixirs, scrolls that cast single-use spells without draining mana, and magic books that teach spells for permanent use.
Equipable items are split into weapons, shields, armour, helms, rings, and amulets. Armour changes the appearance of the player avatar, shields increase the chance of blocking, weapons have different attack speeds and monster-family properties (e.g., swords do 150% damage to Animals, 100% damage to Demons, and 50% damage to Undead), while rings and amulets are indestructible and always Magic or Unique.
All of the equipment also belongs to one of the three main types:
Normal – Standard swords, shields, helmets, etc.; no special attributes.
Magic – Enchanted items shown in blue; can contain one of the aforementioned prefix and/or suffix modifiers.
Unique – Gold items with multiple non-randomized statistics and a set of special properties; most often obtained through completing quests.
Normal items follow a set progression table for each equipment category, e.g., the helms table looks like this: Cap->Skull Cap->Helm->Full Helm->Crown->Great Helm. Each sub-category contains a unique visual, damage/armour range, durability range, sell-price, etc.
Magic items are upgraded versions of normal items enhanced with one or two special properties. These properties include elemental damage/resistance, character attribute enhancement, hit chance boost, etc. Much like regular equipment, special properties can be split into categories and sub-categories, e.g., the added fire damage category contains the sub-categories of: Flame->Fire->Burning->Flaming, each one with a different extra-damage range.
Sub-categories also fall into a prefix or a suffix slot and get added to the actual name of the item, e.g., the Ivory Mace of Swiftness contains the “Ivory” prefix, granting 31-40 additional magic resistance, and the “Sorcery” suffix, increasing the player’s Magic attribute by 16-30.
It’s also worth noting that special properties can only be applied to certain categories of items, and some prefixes are incompatible with other types of suffixes.
… the highly-coveted suffix enchantment “of the Zodiac” (adds between 16 and 20 to all four Attributes evenly) is only available on rings and amulets, so the game engine cannot generate Shields of the Zodiac or Helms of the Zodiac.
…systemic limitations within the game mechanism prevent some prefixes and suffixes from appearing together on the same item. For example, the item “Godly Plate of the Whale” (abbreviated on Battle.net as “G.P.O.W.”) cannot be generated by any monster or vendor in the game.
Unique items can contain up to six special properties, but are not enhanced via the same mechanism as Magic items. Instead, each Unique item has a specific name, a potentially unique icon, and a custom set of statistics/special properties. For example, the “Gotterdamerung” helm has an armour class of 60, adds 20 to all character attributes, lowers damage by 4, drops all resistances to 0, and decreases the player’s light radius by 40%.
The actual formulae for generating items are quite complex and take into consideration the player’s level, type of spawn, location, existing items, and various other variables. Jarulf’s Guide offers a full breakdown of these, but here’s what the system produced during my playthrough:
It’s immediately obvious that consumables made up the largest group of spawned items. A total of 175 dropped throughout the game, with an average of 9.2 per map. As usual, the smaller static maps skewed this to be a bit lower than the median.
Consumables steadily declined throughout the game, and this is notable as it’s a fairly subtle way of adjusting difficulty. Early on in the game, health and mana potions are quite abundant in order to facilitate exploration and experimentation for newcomers. Later on, it’s expected that the player has a greater mastery of the game’s mechanics and needs to worker harder to maintain momentum.
Normal equipable items made up the second largest group of drops and, somewhat surprisingly, remained prevalent long after they had outlived their usefulness. Even in the last map of the game, Normals dropped quite frequently despite only being beneficial during the opening map or two. A total of 144 Normal items dropped during my playthrough, with an average of 7.6 per map.
Magic items didn’t start appearing until the second map, and from there on spawned regularly following a rough sine wave pattern. The 99 Magic drops in the game represented the bulk of the equipment changes, but only outnumbered Normal drops on a handful of maps with an average of 5.2 per floor.
Only 8 Unique items dropped throughout the whole game, an average of 0.4 per map, resulting in 4 equipment changes. This 50% equipment-change ratio might not seem that high for these powerful artefacts, but it’s a much higher ratio than that of Normal or Magic items: 2.1% and 8.1% respectively. What’s more, Unique items had the highest longevity out of all the equipables due to their usefulness, e.g., the Skeleton King’s Undead Crown obtained in map #4 was the helm I wore for the remainder of the game due to its life-leeching properties.
Overall 25 equipment changes took place in the game, but only 15 of these came from loot drops. This makes for a paltry 6.0% overall equipment-change ratio, which is all the starker considering various item slots were rarely swapped.
Economies in RPGs can be quite tricky. Their goal is to give the player plenty of paid options for goods and services without making the currency too rare or too prevalent. Diablo does a great job of hitting this goal as there’s always something to spend money on: identifying items, repairing equipment, recharging magic staves, or even getting a glance at one shopkeeper’s inventory. And of course there are the items themselves:
During my playthrough, consumables made up the bulk of the purchasables and climbed sharply towards the end of the game. The main reason for this was the need to stock up on health/rejuvenation potions in order to plow through the tougher monster encounters.
Normal items were purchased during the first 2 maps, but quickly became obsolete. Magic items replaced them and — with no possibility of buying Unique items — became the main gold-sink. Magic equipment was very expensive, topping off at tens of thousands of gold coins, but well worth it. In a way, Magic items made the economy work by making the shopkeepers a paid-for loot drop.
Unlike most RPGs, the inventory of each seller was generated via an algorithm similar to that of the in-dungeon item spawning. Merchant-items tended to stick around until the player leveled up, allowing a bit of time to gather enough gold to purchase them, and helped alleviate potential issues with consistently getting inappropriate items, i.e., high-dexterity bows for the Sorcerer. The shopkeeps were also notable for having their own personalities and adding a bit of flavour to the economy itself, e.g., they’d only pay 1 gold piece for “cursed” items (Magic equipment with negative special properties), Wirt the Peg-Legged Boy offered just one item at a time but could sell the best equipment in the game, etc.
Overall only 4 Normal and 6 Magic items were bought during my playthrough — compared to 157 consumables — but these accounted for massive 40% of the equipment changes.
The actual amount of gold obtained by picking up coins and selling items can be seen below:
Despite a few sharp peaks and valleys, gold accumulation slowly grew throughout the game. This was true of both the quantities of gold pieces dropped and the prices of sold items. What’s most interesting here is that it felt like my Warrior was constantly gathering huge amounts of gold, but these paled in comparison to how much merchants paid for equipment: I accumulated 60932 gold pieces in the game, but less than 10% of that came from gold drops.
When I completed the game, I had just over 5,000 gold pieces left over in my inventory. This was roughly the same amount of gold as the total number of coins picked up throughout the whole game. Essentially, if no gold drops were ever collected, my Warrior still could’ve afforded most (if not all) of his equipment and consumables.
Gold is by far the most common type of drop in the game, so it’s easy to see how it creates the impression that it’s available in large quantities. Since there are still plenty of useful ways to spend small amounts of money — buying potions or repairing equipment — it never feels pointless either. Ultimately gold drops serve as something of a large filler in Diablo, but it’s done quite subtly and the economy never suffers for it.
Without a doubt, Diablo was very well received. It had an iconic look that spawned countless GeoCities and Tripod sites with Gothic fonts and firewall gifs. It sounded great as well, and its interface made both single-player and multiplayer easy to pick up. The roguelike elements it adopted were also fairly uncommon at the time giving many players a brand new type of experience via large-scale randomization and expertly tuned reward schedules.
Of course various titles tried to copy this template, sometimes wholesale, but never reached the same level of success. Its tempting to say that the reason for this was simply Diablo being more than the sum of its parts, but there’s one more element that might had something to do with it: intelligent design.
Diablo’s entire world, and most specifically its items, were not just randomly generated. The algorithms for creating them were heavily gated, pruning possibilities at each step. While this might sound limiting, it made for a more coherent world with its own atmosphere and ruleset. Instead of finding a “Longsword +1”, the player would receive the “King’s Sword of Haste,” a mighty weapon that — true to its name — increased swing speed and granted a few other bonuses. The item would stay equipped for hours on end, imbuing it with a sense of importance, and conjure images of a long gone dynasty and its skilled blacksmiths. It’d be natural for the player to form an attachment to the weapon, and its “specialness” would only get accentuated by the lack of any bows or shields with the same prefix and suffix. The presence of fixed items and quest would only add credence to the sword’s legacy, blurring the lines between scripted and generated content, and bring forth a tinge of longing and regret when something better came along.
And when Diablo was finally defeated, the player could simply keep going. The quest for better loot never quite ended, which is perhaps why the game is still played and modded to this day.
]]>The talk itself will expand on the above articles with a few more details thrown in. If you’ll be attending the show, come check it out!
]]>Mystery is inherently alluring, though, and it can also have a fulfilling payoff. The Souls games are a good example of that.
Each title begins with a seemingly disconnected CG intro, and proceeds to thrust the player into a crumbling world with barely an explanation. There are no lengthy expositions, conquests retold over animated world maps, extensive flashback sequences, etc. Instead, whatever pieces of narrative the player puts together are entirely optional and widely scattered about.
A tib-bit mentioned in passing by an NPC foreshadows a gruesome battlefield encountered later in the game. Flavour text accompanying an item hints at a long-standing dynasty and its wealth. Parts of defaced statues allude to an outcast regal heir.
There’s not much of a plot to the player-controlled protagonist, but there’s an incredible sense of depth and history to the setting itself. It’s all very cohesive and consistent, and delivered with understated elegance.
That’s something incredibly rare for a brand new series, but the Souls games actually have something of a 20+ year development history.
From Software’s other games such as Eternal Ring, Shadow Tower, Evergrace, Otogi, and King’s Field contain bits of gameplay and ambiance present in the Souls titles: stamina-draining melee attacks, stat-boosting equipment, sporadically dispersed NPCs, non-linear exploration, item durability and crafting, fog-of-war/dynamic lighting, loading screen and item flavour text, highly destructible environments, “soul”-harvesting progression, etc.
All of these previous games experimented with and revised what’s so confidently delivered in Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, but the series itself also follows in the footsteps of another older title: Wizardry.
Wizardry’s arrival and subsequent popularity in Japan is fairly well documented, and King’s Field, From Software’s inaugural release, is said to have been closely inspired by the Western CRPG. The interesting part is that Wizardry’s success seems to have come in part due to a shoddy localization. The only clear example of this I can find is a Wikipedia entry that mentions Blade Cusinart — a silly nod to Cuisinart food processors — evoking an aura of alien mythology.
I assume the results were similar with subsequent Wizardry titles, which contained even more pop culture references, but it’s hard to find any concrete evidence of how these were interpreted in Japan. Perhaps someone else could shine a light on the subject?
Regardless, it’s still fascinating to think about how a simple misconception could be taken to an extreme. Many of From Software’s titles found a niche audience and followed their own paths instead of borrowing the homogeneous conventions of their peers; what else could we have seen if a misunderstood production memo or marketing bullet-point was left to evolve in a bubble?
In the end the significance of Wizardy’s Japanese localization might be a bit overstated, but its heritage is certainly evident in the Souls games. They’re positively brimming with relics steeped in a strange, foreign history, and greatly contribute to the series’ unique style.
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