![]() It's an eternity spent talking to people and solving puzzles in the ruins. Reaching this point in the campaign takes an hour or two, if you know what you're doing. As you realize you have no idea where you are, a group of Slimes attack! This creates a vortex that whisks you to a strange land. After solving some puzzles down there and running back and forth between the ruins and the two towns a few times, you collect enough strange shards to fill one of many pedestals located in the heart of the ruins. Through a series of events, your trio of budding adventurers finds an item that allows them to locate a secret entrance underneath those ruins. Other than two towns and a castle, some strange ruins are your island home's primary attraction. While your dad supports your family by fishing, you spend your time hanging with your two best friends: Maribel, the somewhat bratty daughter of your town's mayor, and Kiefer, the impetuous son of the king. You're the son of a fisherman, living in a small village on a small island country that seems to be the only land mass in the entire world. Even more recent titles in the series, such as the eighth (PlayStation 2) and ninth (DS) installments waste very little time before tossing cannon fodder in front of you. I like running around outside the initial town to fight monsters and earn cash so I can purchase superior equipment and take down hardier foes. And with Dragon Warrior VII, Enix put together an extremely long game that, while easily recognizable to fans of the series, managed to completely botch many of its best attributes.Īs a fan of the series since I played the original Dragon Warrior on the NES, I've always loved being quickly thrown into the mix. ![]() Xenogears was simply a glorious mess, mixing religious symbolism with psychological breakdowns to craft a story that's virtually impossible to truly comprehend. Chrono Cross got bogged down by repeated warnings about the consequences of not taking care of our planet. Wild Arms 2 was a fairly entertaining game marred by constant conversations about what it means to be a hero and whether being one is even desirable. This trend led to longer games that tried to tell more mature stories, often with questionable results. More and more of them found their way to our shores, with most of them endeavoring to appear every bit as epic. Everything about its presentation screamed "THIS IS EPIC!!!" and, before we knew it, JRPGs were viable money-makers. Then Final Fantasy VII released on the PlayStation to an ungodly amount of fanfare, complete with commercials that showed off how much prettier it was than the older games within the genre. They initially were considered a niche genre, and a large percentage of them never made it from Japan to North America. JRPGs went through a bizarre transition during the PlayStation era. "If there's a long-running series, there's a curious misstep somewhere.
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