Why do people like RPGs?

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SpaceGuitarist
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Joined: August 20th, 2016, 7:47 am

Re: Why do people like RPGs?

Postby SpaceGuitarist » August 28th, 2017, 4:24 am

Personally, my experience with RPGs - JRPGs in particular - has been mostly negative. Nevertheless, I try and play at least one or two RPGs a year, hoping that something will click somehow but it hardly happens.

One thing I dislike is that, to me, it feels like I am playing the same game over and over. Bear in mind, I'm not an expert on the subject, so I might miss the finer details that really count, but I have played RPGs from 1995 and from 2016 and I really haven't noticed that much of a difference in gameplay. They all play the same to me.

Second, I really don't feel like I am accomplishing anything. You enter dungeons and fight enemies. As you fight enemies you level up and become stronger. When you meet enemies that are stronger than you, you go back to weaker enemies and fight them some more so you level up just enough to fight stronger enemies. You do this for 75 hours and you finish the game. To me it's a test of endurance rather than anything else.

Mind you, I have enjoyed some RPGs: games like Chrono Trigger or Xenoblade Chronicles had enough of an interesting story and environment to keep me playing. But most of them, I simply abandoned after 10 or 15 hours of getting absolutely nowhere, accomplishing absolutely nothing. Plus, the emphasis on fantasy plots with people with pointed ears in medieval clothes is not exactly appealing to me. Huge respect for people who actually enjoy them and can immerse themselves into those fantasy worlds, but to me RPGs are very far from my idea of what a "videogame" is.

What I'm really open to would be "2-hour RPGs". Role playing games that last only two hours - quite the antithesis of real RPGs, which tend to drag on for 2 hundred hours. But in two hours you can experience the story, the combat...everything, without ever doing the same thing twice. I wish those existed. Well I'm sure they exist on mobile, I'm just too lazy to find them.


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