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Comments
This is the same group that thinks Portal and Bioshock are in the same genre, but if you moved the camera three feet back, they'd be in an entirely different genre. Logic>common terminology.
Like I said, lots of things are both visual novels and games, but that doesn't mean all visual novels are games. Similarly, Metal Gear Solid has a lot of movie bits and is a game, but I don't refer to movies as games.
I thought we already went through this.
Visual novels are videogames the way legless lizards are lizards and Marble Hill is part of Manhattan. Basically, visual novels are technically videogames, legless lizards are strictly speaking lizards, and Marble Hill is politically part of Manhattan, but visual novels feel to the player more like a choose-your-own-adventure book, legless lizards get around by slithering like snakes, and Marble Hill is effectively part of the Bronx mainland.
At least, this is based on what I've heard of VNs. I haven't ever played one myself.
How so? I mean, I don't think anyone pretends the FFs* have great stories. Maybe likeable characters? And even then, I think that's not quite accurate.
*Final Fantasy, not Fantastic Four, which is way better but irrelevant
Mega Man 5 Stone Man = Fantastic Four The Thing
Except that only some of them even have the choose-your-own part. And even then, if having multiple endings you can choose from makes any digital work a videogame, DVD releases of movies with alternate endings are videogames.
I don't think they do, but a pretty huge part of their fanbase seems to think so, and given that the gameplay is a complete trainwreck, I certainly don't think that is the most common reason for people to play it.
I gotta be honest. I tend to have a higher tolerance for turn-based combat and to an extent, grinding. Why? I don't know. I just know it doesn't bug me as much.
I don't mind turn-based combat or grinding.
But FF uses a hybrid of real-time and turn-based, which has all the flaws of both systems and none of the benefits of either, and grinding is just so essential and all-encompassing that, to a great extent, boss battles could be replaced with a door that opens if the game has been running for a certain amount of time with little actual systematic difference.
I've personally didn't get to grind too much, got through the games just fine.
Not saying the flaw isn't there or any less annoying though.
It's less that there's a huge amount of grinding and more that if you didn't do enough of it, you're absolutely screwed and there isn't any way around it. There's no depth.
I concede that point. Now what?
The only FF games that have forced me to grind are FF1, FF3, and FF4 (and only the DS version). And the only reason I had to grind in FF1 was because I was doing a challenge run.
Hmm, I think I might replay an FF game to see if I still like it. God damn my backlog.
Okay, if it has an exceptional amount of grinding, that would throw me off, since it's the only FF game that's held my interest for more than a couple of hours. That may have skewed my view on the level of grinding present.
From what I've played, most Final Fantasy games (really, most JRPGs in general) require basically no grinding. Actually, JRPGs more often have the opposite problem, where just by playing the game normally you'll end up too strong to actually be challenged... Especially when it's a game that has lots of sidequests and minigames and item creation systems and whatever else.
^
This. Only real exception is when a boss is spamming its most powerful attack over and over again. Which admittedly a good number of them do.
In other news:
http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/
Honestly, the only JRPG series I've ever played that flatout necessitates grinding is the SMT series, and that's... well, Atlus.
I did have to grind for FFXII
I'm not sure if it's just that I suck at RPGs but yeah.
FFXII is a bit of an oddball, as it's far easier to avoid enemies than the other games.
Re: Narrative and gameplay.
I don't think it's an either/or thing. The best games (or at least the best "hardcore" games) achieve a symbiotic relationship between the two. blah blah Demon's Souls blah Dark Souls, but seriously, both of those games are fantastic at conveying story through the general gameplay experience. A whole lot of story information has to be inferred from tidbits of information brought together by critical thinking, but the end experience makes one feel like a single person in a moving world rather than a nexus around which the entire universe revolves. The Witcher games are great at this, too.
In fact, The Witcher 2 is one of those rare games that has its cake and eats it. It has cut-scenes and dialogue selection as are standard for RPGs, but those kinds of things tend to revolve around the individual characters rather than the world. So much of the setting is conveyed through direct gameplay exposure, and many characters will react to choices you made earlier in the game -- even if you didn't know you were making a choice relevant to the overall story. It's all very natural and organic.
I think this is also one of the biggest successes of the Call of Duty franchise; except for loading screens and some very rare instances, everything that happens is witnessed in first person by the player, and without a break in the action. There's a sense of overall cohesion that makes the game feel like a completely continuous experience.
The ultimate challenge here is successfully integrating strong storytelling without stepping on the toes of player agency. If you look at a series like Metal Gear Solid, you can see how great gameplay and great story (at least in part) together don't necessarily make for the best experience. In the case of MGS, they lack cohesive integration, because half-hour cutscenes are just made of bullshit. The sad thing about this is that the MGS games are all great for their respective eras, but they could have been even better with stronger cohesion between narrative and gameplay. In MGS4, there is literally a half-hour cutscene. Why? There's no reason the relevant information couldn't have been sprinkled around within the gameplay experience itself, with the most relevant and important parts delivered via a much shorter cutscene.
That's the flaw with autership in any medium, though -- there is no control on indulgence. I was about to say that indulgence is more harmful to games than any other medium, but then I remembered 2001: A Space Odyssey and well
Objectively, I'm sure the Witcher is a very, very well-made game.
All of the great narrative mixed together in the gameplay still wouldn't make me interested in it. Just not my cup of tea. (I don't even like tea anyways.
)
It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but from a critical perspective, the second in particular is fantastic in almost every aspect. The first is still a solid and exceptional traditional WRPG, and perhaps the last of its kind.
HGhaoshfouhandigsugijpsdhngpuofdhngopdijgodr God damn Half-life.
That's why I think Mass Effect 2 and 3 are better than 1. The sequels are actually fun to play, and they have the story and setting and character shit that I love.
That's fine. I can accept that it's extremely well-made from a critical perspective.
Gah... I need my Mega Man fix... But what I can do to make it more challenging? I'm not patient enough to try a Perfect Run.
Or, to expand on my bndjfnkjdsabngjibdniojgbfidsjgbfdi'ing... People are perfectly accustomed to watching cutscenes, and so it does not break immersion at all to watch one. What does break immersion is to have NPCs talking to your character while standing 25 feet away and facing the opposite direction, while you're screwing around with the physics engine because the game gives you an achievement for doing something stupid while there's a story event going on.
I was thinking about using that as my example, but I think Call of Duty does it better. You can move freely while just about anything happens in Half-Life, but Call of Duty more often uses fun combinations of restriction of agency while still leaving the player with a certain degree of control -- even if that's only visual perspective. Getting shellshocked on the beaches of Normandy and being dragged to safety is a good example, or controlling a dying soldier as they witness the aftermath of a nuclear detonation.
So while the games use restriction of agency to signify that something different or exceptional is happening, they continue to provide enough agency that the player is still an active participant in the overall experience. In Half-Life, a lot of similar instances give you nothing in particular to do -- in Call of Duty, they provide something to respond to on an immediate gameplay level. Modern Warfare 3, while being a better FPS than most, was largely luckluster for a CoD title; all the same, there's a particular section where you're being dragged towards a helicopter while wounded, and you have enough control to gun down approaching bad guys while you friends drag you to safety. It's a perfect example of why I decided Call of Duty was a better example than Half-Life in this context.
^ There's also that.
^^, ^Yeah, I feel like Half-Life 2, despite having a better story than Half-Life 1, is actually a step down in terms of how it conveys the story.
I agree with that.
^^^ From what I've seen, the Call of Duty series isn't as bad as Half-Life 2 in that regard, but it still has silliness like characters looking backward to talk to you even when you're actually beside them. Even though it's kind of minor, it's that sort of thing that hurts immersion in a story more than just a lack of control over your character, or a perspective change, or whatever.