The Best Laid Plans…
February 9th, 2009 Posted in Comment
Re: Viera’s Planning Your Playing
Like you, I absolutely adore RPGs (although they take far too long to complete so I haven’t played as many as I’d like) but this issue is possibly one of the biggest barriers to an otherwise all-encompassing genre: you have to read up on the game before you play.
If you want to complete an FPS or Platformer properly (100%), you don’t need any form of prior knowledge. You simply dive headfirst into the game, train yourself up and apply yourself to the necessary areas, whether it’s completing a mission in less than three minutes or finding those elusive last Macguffins in each level.
With RPGs, you have to read up on how the mechanics of the game work before you can truly enjoy it, which completely ruins the enjoyment for me. It lowers the sensation of actually playing to feel more like work. Like you’re studying, and then playing the game is the exam. That’s not the way it should be!
Oblivion’s beasties level up at the same time as you, meaning if you focus on certain stats, you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage at a later stage. Likewise the quests give you different rewards depending on your level, and the only way to know which to do early and which to save for later is to read up on it. Surely, in a game based on complete freedom, I shouldn’t be punished for not completing things in the order the developers intended?
Mass Effect and Fallout 3 are incredible gaming experiences, easily standing out from the crowd of other RPGs, but unless you read up on then, you’ll be blissfully unaware of the fact that, once you’ve beaten the final boss, you can’t return to finish the side-quests without starting again. I still had half a galaxy to save!
RPG developers need to appreciate that because of the time, effort, sweat and blood players put into their games, they need to be more lenient than other genres would be. They need to let the player discover the game in their own way, or at least warn/guide them if they need to follow a certain path.
Gaming should be about playing, not planning.
3 Responses to “The Best Laid Plans…”
By shoinan on Feb 11, 2009
Isn’t the save issue you mentioned the result of games now autosaving rather than enforcing manual saving - because going to an old save file and doing all the side quests is something I’d have taken for granted a few years back.
Not all RPGs are guilty of thse flaws, in particular the Final Fantasy series. Sure, some of the tutorials could be better, but they are there and they do explain just about everything.
By Lauren on Feb 11, 2009
Funny thing is, now I have gotten over the planning stage I am really enjoying The Last Remnant just like I should of from the start… it’s just frustrating it took this long and so much sorting out to get there.
Mass Effect was fun, just a shame that you couldn’t go back to stuff after but then most RPG’s you can’t do that anyway…
By James on Feb 12, 2009
@shoinan - True, but I still do keep an old save file on standby. The trouble is if you keep that old save file quite close behind your current one, you can still be foolish enough to pass The Point Of No Return
@Lauren - Glad you’re enjoying TLR (I liked the look of that one but never got round to picking it up), but I’m still of the mind that if something is frustrating, it’s not quite right