Topic: The Golden Age of RPGs

0_0

JRPGs are like PlayStations; nobody cares about them anymore.

Except for the people who play them of course.

I just don't want people saying that a console is automatically better just because it has more games period.

But it's OK to say a console is better if it has more games that are better quality than the competition, right?

Considering your oldest favorite game is from 2004, that doesn't really surprise me...

[/div]

Of course. No one wants a console where the majority of its games are bad after all. Then again, maybe it all boils down to preference. :/

Which is the point I was trying to make.

Golden Age Of Console RPGs: 1990-2007

Those were good times I severely missed out on. At least this drought gives me time to catch up.

See back then, replay value was really limited. So all a game really needed was a decent story, and easy controls.
With the internet, games now have near infinite replay value with online multiplayer and mods etc.

To say that games are getting anything but better would be ludicrous.
RPG's have changed. It's now possible to have a good first person shooter rpg (Borderlands, maybe Half-life 2 depending on how you define things)

The only difference between then and now is that consoles have gone a bit more shooter/first person oriented. Good RPG's are amazingly abundant on the PC. The golden age of gaming is always the present time. Take off the nostalgia goggles and get ready to play some really fun games.

Now there something I can agree with.
PSOne had all the best RPGs, and you can't say thats wrong.
Because I am never wrong.

SNES PS2 that is all

Gaming has changed, yes, but change =/= good. In my opinion, RPGs have lost their capacity to balance good gameplay with a good story. Notice that the best RPGs lately have achieved their greatness by using old-school techniques. No bad voice acting to ruin the moments, no reliance on flashy cutscenes, no action-y battle system to ruin the balance and depth, and actual areas you can roam to do some exploring without making movement a chore when you're ready to move on. While I feel Xenoblade is a wonderous exception to most of these rules (except the voice acting, but even that isn't as bad as some games), ultimately nearly every RPG released in on next-gen systems have left me greatly underwhelmed. There's no nostalgia here, either. I only started playing RPGs in 2007, and I've had far more fun playing games on the NES than on the PS3, let alone the classics on the SNES, PSOne, and of course the PS2 just before it. Heck, the best RPG in the last 5 years besides Xenoblade is Persona 4, a last gen game released in 2009 by one of the few RPG developers that I feel still know what they're doing.

Perhaps it's time RPG developers step back and look at what's important. I've seen too many try to abandon the ways of the past as if they no longer work, only to find that their way was wrong. Others scramble to recreate the past without even the foggiest idea of what made past titles good in the first place. It's as if they need to relearn the once great formula all over again, and if they don't do it soon, The Golden Age will truly be a thing of the past.

@LordJumpMad
From what I've heard, it turns out you never are.

His words aren't wrong, he just says things no one wants to believe.

@Mickeymac
So if I choose to belive in them will they lead me to my doom?

I have an incredible number of old-school rpgs in my Final Fantasy Portable I mean, PSP.

The golden age, will only ever become "A thing of the past" because of your tastes. Don't let yourself believe RPG's are no longer fun.
I can understand your disappointment with RPGS's on consoles, but not as a whole.

So why exactly are they leaving you "Underwhelmed?"

I have to admit, I was born in 1996, so I don't really have "nostalgia googles". I guess Youtubers such as SupraDarky and NintendoCapriSun influenced me in such a way that I really do feel as if I have to give older games more credit. I'm aware that there are excellent rpgs from the 7th generation such as Xenoblade, so it doesn't only have to be 90's, it can stem to any year really when you look at it in a certain way since maybe there were more quality games back then then there are now, but then I think of people such as AVGN who have shown me that there were indeed many bad games back then.

I guess I always like to think of it like the Disney Renaissance. While the 21st century has it's good share of Disney films, the 90's were like hit after hit.

@Electricmastr0
The 90's Disney movies were good. Then Pixar was born, and Disney became mostly obsolete in the 21st century.

Nostalgia goggles can also be a reference to how people just sort of blatantly say that everything in the past was better. There were some great RPG's back then. But I don't believe even for a second, that there were more better games then, rather then now.

RPG's back then were quite similar in both style and execution. Anime sprites telling a good yarn. Nothing wrong with that, I understand a lot of Nintendo enthusiasts like that, heck I like it too. But that's really a lot for variety.

I've gotten past trying to hang on to something forever, because I know something better will come along eventually. It comes along sooner then you think.

Considering your oldest favorite game is from 2004, that doesn't really surprise me...

My oldest favourite game is a game I seriously doubt you've even heard of, and was released in 1994. Dungeons & Dragons: Wake of the Ravager. Before Baldur's Gate, that is the game that showed me that video game RPGs could be more than barely interactive linear plots.

In other words, it was the first time that I realised than a CRPG could be an RPG.

RPG's have changed. It's now possible to have a good first person shooter rpg (Borderlands, maybe Half-life 2 depending on how you define things)

No. RPGs have stayed the largely the same through the years. Mechanics aside, Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder and the various other pen-and-paper RPGs (and they came first, therefore they're the real deal, I don't care whether you personally like them or not) have stayed true to the game design philosophy of Gary Gygax through the years. What's changed is now we have people who have no clue what an RPG is, and have likely never played a proper RPG (media and the gaming community alike) running around acting like they know what an RPG is. You've got people calling Zelda an RPG. You've got others saying Borderlands is an RPG. You've got people defining an RPG as "levelling up and statistics," and others who think that a linear plot is a defining characteristic of an RPG.

It's ludicrous. It's like me going around calling Quake a platformer because it has a jump button.

But no, if you stick to the actual definition of RPG, then it's a genre that has stayed true through the years. Most of the examples people quote as modern RPGs are hybrid genres, at best, and not true RPGs at all.

(Disclaimer: I've been playing RPGs for around 20 years, and even studied the game philosophy behind it. This possibly makes me a senile and cranky old man incapable of keeping up with the times, but on the other hand it does mean that I can recognise what is an isn't an RPG).