Ever since playing Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7 last year, I developed a craving for JRPGs. If you remember in my Spiritfarer review, I mention how there are certain genres I couldn't get into like crafting games and S&M games.
I have a different problem with JRPGs. RPGs are a genre I know I can love. I have consistently liked the Fire Emblem series as well the other well regarded Nintendo RPGs (i.e. the Mario RPGs, Pokémon, Mother). The stories and core gameplay of certain games have always intrigued me. For example, I haven't played Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and Suikoden II, but those alone I want to put in my mouth. "You are telling me one game is basically a Studio Ghibli RPG while the other has been described as Game of Thrones meets Pokémon? Sign me up!"
My favorite game of all time is a JRPG, so I know the genre has plenty of titles that I could theoretically love.
However, I haven't play many RPGs for the sole fact that starting a RPG can be a massive hurdle due to a variety of "RPG Stereotypes." You know the ones: excessive grinding, random encounters, unruly complexity, miscellaneous story bullshit. However, Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7 manage to pull me in early despite those two also having a couple of JRPG stereotypes. What separates an RPG that can hook you immediately from an RPG that can't?
There is an adage in script writing known as the "first ten minutes." I think the equivalent in JPRGs, considering their average length, is the first five hours. The first ten minutes of a movie are the stretch of time that usually establishes your world, story, and characters. More importantly, your first ten minutes should hook your audience. In a way, it should answer the question "why am I watching or playing this?"
Over the course of these past few months, I sampled several JRPGs and played at least up to the first five hours. I then picked a handful of those games to discuss their strengths and weaknesses of their first five hours. Do these five hours reflect the experience as a whole? NOPE. Is it fair to criticize a game for only part of its work? Ehhhh, kind of. Is this blog just an excuse to review RPGs without dedicating forty hours a pop to complete them? Definitely.
But in all seriousness, I hope this experiment will at least help me figure out my tastes with JRPGs and potentially better enjoy the genre. But with that said, let's begin this mini-review compilation:
Chrono Tigger
I was aware of a few things about Chrono Trigger already through osmosis like a few of the characters and the courtroom scene which we will get to a little later. I was also aware that Chrono Trigger had really good pacing. However, I didn't expect the pacing to be soccer mom travel literary good.
Chrono Trigger has one of the strongest first five hours I have ever seen in an RPG. In fact, if I merely did the first hour of this game, I would still have plenty to talk about. It's a testament to its pacing, and it's evidence that JRPGs don't have any excuses in having weak opening sequences. It seems every hour puts me precisely in a different situation. By hour one, I am experiencing the famous courtroom scene. By hour two, I have traveled to a post-apocalypse to escape from prison. By hour three, I meet a robot character that is more sympathetic than some human video game characters. By hour four...well I was actually stuck, so I had to use a walkthrough. And by the fifth hour...well okay, the Denadoro Mountains drags a bit. But still, it's magnificent how much story is jammed pack in the first five hours.
In fairness, Chrono Trigger is short for its genre, but that provides a great lesson to the benefit of not padding your experience. There is such an insecurity in games in general to make games as long as possible to warrant the $50+ price tag. The irony in my case is that the grindy tedium in some of these lengthy experiences makes me not want to play them. However, I digress; After all, the point is to review the first five hours, and I am getting a little sidetrack.
You play as Chrono. Although, due to limitation in the birth certification process, Chrono's mother could only use five characters, so his name is Crono. Anyway, you are tasked in saving the world through time traveling shenanigans. And right off the bat, I am reminded of all the best time travel stories where they take a creative spin on time travel clichés. We aren't even talking strictly time traveling to the future or the past. In fact, the best use of time travel, in the first five hours, simply involves a passage of a little over an hour as we go from the millennial fair to the courtroom scene.
I imagine every video essayist and editorial has taken a crack at this great scene and likely I won't have much to add. All I will say that it is the best use of time travel in the game (or at least in the first five hours). Yeah, it isn't "time travel" per say, but it has the quirks that make time travel stories so engaging. It recontextualizes your previous actions as how you interact with the fair is judged in the courtroom scene. It emphasizes the idea of consequences which is a quiet running theme in time travels stories and a subversive device in video game storytelling. And finally, there is a layer of commentary of current social problems by putting them through a lens of either the past or future. In this case, the corruptions of the justice system and all of that implies.
The courtroom scene also has tension because the game does a good job at making the characters worth rooting for which is another thing modern games are bad at. I think of Master Chief in Halo 1 and trying my best to remember why I cared at all for his well being, but here it is pretty straightforward. All the characters have passion. Marle, for example, is a princess that wants to experience life to the fullest but is held back by royal expectations. It's very simple, but it is enhanced by our involvement in the story which is why Chrono is one of the few cases where a silent protagonist is actually useful. I remember Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw describe the benefits of Gordan Freeman's mutism as a way for the player to fill in the personality as they see fit, and I saw that with Chrono as well. There is a dancing scene. If you are a tsundere, you play Chrono dancing reluctantly, or you can dance normally and not be a buzzkill. Your choice gives Chrono character, and it feels so natural and organic to the experience.
Man, it feels like I discovered narrative gold except the gold was in plain sight, with giant arrows pointing at it, and the arrows are on fire! I guess I'm saying there is a reason people hype this game up.
Honestly, the only nitpick I have is the combat and cutscenes are a tad slow which contrast to the overall excellent pacing. A lot of the hassle in combat is just waiting for the active time battle meter to go up. The ATB system is fine during bosses or more challenging encounters where it brings a level of tension and suspense. But in cases like the basic encounters, the ATB system adds road bumps to this speedy highway. Similarly, cutscenes falter as well where the characters have these slow pauses or blocking where they will walk across the room that simultaneously add dramatic effect but also subtract from my patience.
And I like the combat and cutscenes. Combat is flashing, rewards tactics that exploits enemies' positioning, and gives added purposes in customizing your party. Cutscenes are well written and have the quality of being funny without taking away from gravity of the situation. That said, because it was a tad slow, I ended up at times using the fast forward feature on my emulat-oh ummm I mean uh....
....Oh look! Is that the next game for us to discuss? Let's check it out!
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed Grinding
I feel Dragon Quest is to video games the way the James Bond franchise is for movies. I feel their watershed moments to the medium happened early on. And ever since then, they have been riding on tradition and iconography. It's not like Zelda, Mario, or Final Fantasy where they've prospered by occasionally upping the standards of their respective genres. Dragon Quest prospered purely on being comfortable and safe. And hey, there is nothing particularly wrong with that in the same way it is not wrong to indulge in a James Bond movie.
However, there is such a thing as something not tailoring to your tastes. And after playing Dragon Quest 8, I quickly found out the series is not my cup of tea.
First off, the game makes no attempt to hide the fact that you have to grind. Dragon Quest encourages you to grind without much incentive other than you won't be able to continue unless you grind. There is something about the psychology and framing that I hate in Dragon Quest's approach to leveling up. I've noticed in retrospect how a lot of my favorite RPGs mask the grinding to make it more fun through the use of forced encounters. It makes you fight weaker mobs, but it is flavored by adding a story beat or a character to it. Examples include the Trainers in Pokémon, the set pieces in Persona 5, and the Glitz Pit in Paper Mario Thousand Year Door. Other than one encounter that happens at the beginning, the game doesn't compel you to fight weaker enemies other than the bare prompt that you won't beat the bosses which isn't encouraging. There is something to the psychology of RPGs that I would rather fight ten forced encounters than five encounters that feel completely meaningless. Although in Dragon Quest 8, you will fight far more than five encounters in between major boss fights.
This is worsen by the game not telling you how much you should grind. I found the best way around this was to simply look at a walkthrough that had a level recommendation. Then, I would blankly push the attack button, occasionally push the heal button, and gain experience points. Rinse and Repeat. It is so blatantly monotonous.
And when it isn't being blatantly monotonous, it is subtly irritating with the lack of streamlining. I played the 3DS version which admittedly made a lot of strides already in implementing quality of life features. There are no random encounters. It comes with a fast forward feature to speed up battles. There is a quick save option which cuts down the need to go to the sparse save rooms. It is a good thing I played this one over the PS2 version or else this review would be far more brutal. While I hate mindless grinding, I hate random encounters more.
However, there are still a few features I would have preferred to be streamlined. The items you get via battle go straight to your extra inventory instead of your preferred characters' inventory meaning extra time spent on the menu to reorganize your new items. Cutscenes can't be skipped which makes refighting bosses a chore. This is worsen in the first few hours where you don't have many strategies against boss fights meaning strategies mainly devolve to having a higher number and a little luck.
There are a couple of things that I like. The characters are all cute and charming. It reminded me of Saturday Morning cartoons specifically Last Airbender and Xiaolin Showdown. This sentiment extends to the story which while standard is very inoffensive and has a nice Winnie the Pooh quaintness to it. The music and aesthetic is calming and pleasant, mitigating my anger at the game during my five-hour playthrough.
The game has a great skill point system where you can assign points to gain either weapon specific abilities or other skills. It makes buying weapons more dynamic as it is not simply about buying items that have a higher number. It also makes leveling up feel great as it gives an opportunity to assign more points. Unfortunately, this meant the gameplay feels very Skinner Box as the skill system is really the only thing that kept me pushing the A button. At the end of the day, it was still random mob enemies with no context for me to engage with it.
Suffice it to say, I immediately stopped once my runtime hit five hours like a fast food worker eager to clock out. Dragon Quest is not necessarily bad. However, the Skinner box method of grinding seen in Dragon Quest felt disgustingly meaningless even if there are worse examples of this in other games. Frankly, I say skip this one unless the grind is something you are into. And if you are, well try not to get into drugs. You seem to have an addictive personality.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitively Complex Edition
And unlike the casualties of the Sega Saturn/Dreamcast exclusives, Xenoblade isn't locked to one console as it got ported again to the new 3DS and Nintendo Switch.
Really, the only reason I couldn't get ahold of Xenoblade was unlucky circumstances. I remember asking my mom for Xenoblade for Christmas only for my mom to have zero luck finding a copy. It was just my luck that Xenoblade didn't have an explosive release so getting a copy was nigh impossible in my local area.
Then, three years later, it got ported to the brand new New 3DS. I thought "awesome! That's one game I can get on the New 3DS. Once more exclusives come out, I will definitely buy the New 3DS." Unfortunately, those exclusives never came and to this day Xenoblade was the only worthwhile exclusive for that poor Nintendo handheld with the weird second nipple. After that, I went to college and had a break from video games in general. The idea of playing Xenoblade or the fact that I could have simply bought a Wii copy online fell way in the back of my mind.
However now, the stars have align. It's 2021. We are in a pandemic. I have a game console with Xenoblade on it, and I can play it on my bed. What a time to be alive.
You know, I went this long talking about how much I wanted to play this game and I still haven't explained why. Well let me fill you in.
Xenoblade Chronicles has one of my favorite fantasy premises. And after finally playing it, I can also say it has one of my favorite opening cutscenes in video games as well. It starts off as cliché as you can get. In the dawn of time or whatever, two titans fought each other. "Ok, I guess that's neat." They turned to earth and now civilizations live on these two titans. "Ok, now we are getting somewhere."
There is a sword called the Monado that is all powerful and only works for a few individuals. "Ehhh, ok we are at cliché again." The sword's origin is a mystery, and it is uncertain whether it is going to go in a fantasy direction, a sci-fi direction, or both....also it has time travel powers. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
Xenoblade's strength when it comes to narrative is the little musings that touch up the world. It's certainly a case where the lore is better than the plot alla Dark Souls, because the plot is rather pedestrian. Weirdly, it reminded me of the movie Titanic or a classic 80s movie where all the basics of a good story are there but it lacks the nuance or surprises for me to get really sucked in at least in the first five hours.
There is a major character death in the first five hours that is both hampered by the fact that is was predictable and because that person will likely come back in some light because there is a freaking time travel sword. The main characters set out to get revenge after being attacked by the antagonists which leads to the aforementioned death, but it has the same gravity as a losing football team setting out to vandalize the other team's cars. Again, all of this is fine as it is at least structured, but it is missing layers to be truly amazing.
Otherwise, I don't have much to say about the story. It's fine and serves as a nice break from the gameplay. There a handful of issues such as instances where the game borders on turning into a full Idiot Plot, but they are not deal breakers. The real meat in this review entry is the gameplay because there is a lot to unpack.
While I usually regret not playing great games sooner, like Chrono Trigger, I do not have that same feeling for Xenoblade Chronicles, because I don't think my fourteen or fifteen year old self could have handled Xenoblade's game design. Xenoblade has a very steep learning curve not helped by tutorials only giving blocks of text or menus to help you. Menu tutorials are such a lazy way to be hands off especially when those menu tutorials are harder to read than the science articles I read in graduate school, all technical fantasy jargon with bad visual and tactile conveyance on how certain systems can be useful.
The combat is very unintuitive where I still couldn't tell if I was playing the game right even after five hours of playing. Combat encounters are usually hectic with numbers and status ailments flying everywhere, so it is hard to tell what strategies were working. Even with a strategy, your fellow party member's AI isn't the greatest and might not cooperate with that strategy.
The game various menus made one of my favorite aspects of playing an RPG, gearing up your party, a headache. This is more of a personal take, but I felt the menus were way too cluttered. The only one that felt visually intuitive was maybe the arts menu.
A part of me wants to continue this game out of pure spite (and because Sharla is cute) rather for any love of this game. I feel like the game is trying to figure out the game, which can be fun, but that loses its charm especially after five hours.
Take my advice, know what you are getting into when starting Xenoblade Chronicles. It is certainly in the realm of something like Minecraft or Monster Hunter where going in blind is not encouraged. This game is like mayo or other acquired taste foods. The game can potentially be really absorbing, but you will have to learn to get used to its particular taste. I would suggest reading a bunch of forums on the subject to help you ease into the systems better.
The mechanics I was able to figure out in my five hours added a great deal of depth to the gameplay, so I know this game can be super rewarding once I get used to it. And to be fair, Xenoblade is not entirely the game equivalent of a Catholic nun. I like how experience is gained through multiple methods, like discovering landmarks, rather than just combat. It makes grinding almost unnecessary. There is also a very lenient fast travel and checkpoint system. Your characters fully heal after every battle. The game tells you which items will be useful later in future side quests which was a Godsend a couple of times. The game overall does a great job at not being punishing despite how demanding it can be. Truth be told, the whole game is a good job. It is just that its one failing for me, its learning curve, plagued my experience of the first five hours which doesn't reflect well when the whole point of this review is to judge the first five hours.
For what it is worth, take this part of the review compilation with a grain of salt. My gut tells me my opinion will change greatly as I continue through the game, and I am going to continue through the game. I just hope when I continue my motivation will soon change from spite to engaged enthusiasm.
Atelier Ryza: Unnecessary Colons & The Melting Pot Problem
I bring it up with this game because I didn't play it for the reasons I wanted to play Chrono Trigger or Xenoblade. I didn't fall in love with its art style or its story. It wasn't recommended to me by a friend or a favorite Youtuber.
I decided to play it for one thing. That thing...is them legs.
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| Ohhhh.... |
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| Oh my.... |
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| Oh Lord have mercy.... |
So because of my aesthetic obsession with legs, I am left with this game. For once, fan service got the better of me.
Atelier Ryza is an RPG that splits the gameplay loop into two categories. One involves collecting resources to craft them into tools and items. The other involves a ATB combat system that's pretty standard but solidly done.
All in all, I can't say much that is objectively bad about Atelier Ryza's gameplay. Mission waypoints don't show up on the fast travel menu adding guess work and tedium to navigation that is overall very accommodating to the player's time. The first five hours seem to weigh more heavily on crafting than combat which could have been more balanced. And finally, certain game systems are too overly complicated for my tastes. That, or it isn't overly complicated and the game just does a pathetic job explaining it encouraging you to either read blocks of clinical text or go on reddit to get u/CorytheDankWeeb to teach you. Other than that, there is seemingly little to complain about, and the bad tutorial didn't get in the way as much as it did with Xenoblade.
"But what's this?!? There is a hidden third category? I wonder what that could be? OH, I see. The poorly paced story.
The story is one of the most frustrating things to sit through from an opening act perspective. It is not Twilight Princess bad, but there is a lot of faffing about as the titular Ryza, her friends, and her thicc thighs go on a vague adventure with the most basic character motivations. The only exception is the character Lent who has a bit more going on with an abusive dad which plays into the dynamics of his goals but also in how he interacts with the town. However, the story seems more preoccupied with Ryza's project which feels like a white girl who wants to open a restaurant.
It gets even more frustrating when plot starts happening but it still insists on focusing on something else entirely. A notable example happens right near the end of my 5-hour playtime. Ryza and co. happen across a mysterious monster that runs away from them. Two other characters, whose backstory is still a mystery to us at this point, mentions in passing how the creature is scouting the area.
"Oooo," I thought. "The story finally starting to move. Ah, I wonder how this is going to develop?"
And then, in the very next mission, you have to fix someone's basement.
The reasoning for this odd pacing is definitely for the purpose of a game needing to happen, so it contrives reasons to use the crafting mechanics. In that sense, it reminds me of Conker's Bad Fur Day where Conker is trying to continue to the story but is stopped by requests to collect arbitrary items like cheeses and bees. Only in Conker's Bad Fur Day, that was meant as a joke.
This type of clash between gameplay and story is not uncommon in games, and one that is almost hard to complain about since it is not an easy problem to fix. However, it cases like these where it is at the detriment of the pacing, I can't help but be annoyed.
Atelier Ryza's issues are a lot like its full title. Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout is a title that's quite the mouthful with the colon subtitle that feels unnecessary and optional. I proved as much by not using the full title throughout this review until now. On their own, the words "Ever Darkness and Secret Hideout are compelling, but they don't need to both be on the title. It's not Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and the Mirror of Erised.
The gameplay and story feel the same way. The gameplay is fun. The story could also be fun. However mixing them together creates problems that interrupts the flavors of them individually. The gameplay is fun, but it is interrupted by cutscenes and story missions that feel like literal chores. The story could be fun, but it is interrupted by the need to have gameplay. If Atelier Ryza was a TV show, there wouldn't have been an scene where Ryza has to fix a basement!
It's a Melting Pot problem. It has too many ingredients that makes the experience heavy and kind of bloated especially if you are trying to package it in the first five hours. It's at least good enough to where I want to keep playing but know that I am venturing forth with a layer of hesitation on whether Atelier Ryza can win me over.
Final Fantasy VII: Redundant
Thankfully, I have a work around. Instead of doing a N64/PS1 era game, why not do a remake of a N64/PS1 game? And so, for our final game of the night, we are doing the Final Fantasy VII Remake. It is funny we are reviewing the remake on only the first five hours since the whole game only covers the first five hours of the original game.
When I reached the five-hour mark in the remake, I was gearing up to set out to Sector 5 (about 45 minutes in the original).
Yeah, this game is as padded as a cell designed for a Kingdom Hearts fan.
To its credit, it does an admirable job trying to make the filler content worthwhile by attempting to expand on the characters. Although, I put heavy emphasis on “attempting” and “trying" in the same way I would when describing a white Republican trying to condone his racist behavior by attempting to remind people that he has a black friend.
In a nutshell, both the original and the remake aren't definitive portrayals of the Final Fantasy 7 story, and the flaws of each game feel unique to their own.
Final Fantasy 7 is held back by horrendous random encounters, a bad English translation, convoluted backstories, and dated graphics. The remake on the other hand is held back by Jessi.
Where do I start with this girl? First off, the game spends an outrageous amount of time on her character when she was originally just a glorified movie extra with speaking lines. It would be like if they remade the original Star Wars, they decided to spend forty minutes exploring the backstory of Owen. Although knowing the history of the Special Editions, I wouldn't put it past them, but I digress.
And while the dialogue is pretty bad throughout, it is more noticeable during the scenes with Jessi. You can really picture the middle aged Asian man writing the dialogue when Jessi is on screen.
She is almost the mascot of bad when it comes to the Final Fantasy VII remake as she represents a lot of the disappointments related to the remake. The voice acting teeters between terrible 90s voice acting and so-so anime English voice acting. The padding does nothing for the plot. If you played the remake as if it was an original story, you would understand just how worthless the detours get. While the writing in the original wasn't great either, it at least did a solid job with its pacing putting you in a brand new situation roughly every hour. The remake, for all of its intended purpose of being some type of metacommentary, is simply a worse version when it comes to narrative.
That being said, I can't bring myself to hate the remake in the same way I can't bring myself to hate the original for its flaws. For all that holds back both the original and the remake, the strengths of Final Fantasy 7 are worth trotting on for.
The combat is fantastic. The game feel has a sense of weight that makes landing hits extremely satisfying. Each character plays differently given a diverse move set that improves the party system of the original without taking out the fun of the Materia system. And unlike Xenoblade Chronicles, the game is fast, but it isn't overwhelming and the learning curve is much more manageable. By extension, I love how you can switch characters on the fly which is something I would have loved to have seen in Xenoblade Chronicles.
And best of all, no random encounters! The combat is overall an A+.
Aesthetically, the game fixes all the problems I had with the original. The game is bloody gorgeous. It's not that I don't hate N64 era polygons, but the original FF7 epicness definitely feels held back by its polygonal models. Case in point:
I could have used less subway tracks and sewers for the environments, but I overall really like how they updated the environments.
I have a love hate relationship with this game. Sometimes it is mostly hate. However, I will say it was the hardest among these five to pull myself away from when I reached five hours. That's gotta mean something. It makes my joke title of Final Fantasy 7: Redundant kind of misleading. FF7 Remake is a fine title and stands as a decent companion piece to the original. It has its flaws. But like the original, some can be circumvented if you know what you are doing. I mean, let's face it, there is no way you guys are playing the original Final Fantasy 7 without at least the temptation of implementing fast forward and turning off random encounters.
I would suggest the following. Play Final Fantasy 7 Remake, skip the cutscenes involving Jessi, the Avalanche, and the other characters you might not like, and you will have yourself a great time. Trust me when I say you won't be missing much from the story. After all, it only covers the first five hours.
Conclusion
At the end of this experiment, I found myself surprised by how many I ended up liking from this selection after my five hour sampling.
To wrap this up, I want to say a few things to people that are still hesitant to getting into the JRPG genre or exploring outside the Nintendo RPG space. RPGs are more accessible than you think. And while there are a variety of JRPG stereotypes that will push you away, they also have a variety of wonderful goodies to pull you in. It's not even some secret technique either. Who would have thought to make a JRPG compelling in its opening few hours is to have a satisfying & intuitive gameplay system, a gripping story with great characters that actively engage with the plot, and a general attempt at not making the player feel like they are wasting their fucking time.
My suggestion, assuming you are starting off of the five JRPGs I talked about, is to play Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 7 Remake first. They were the most accessible. I would also suggest playing Xenoblade but only if feel ready for it! As for Atelier Ryza and Dragon Quest 8, they're fine but they're definitely an acquired taste. If what I said about them didn't bother you or even enticed you, then it wouldn't hurt to give those two a try.
I will leave you up to find more gems for yourself. Now if you excuse me, I got to reevaluate on why I thought playing all these RPGs was a bloody good idea!
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