It’s no secret that we here at Something Classic are very much into retro games. With an average age of 28, we cut our gaming teeth on early 90’s titles that are now firmly established as, to use a technical term, “oldschool.” Gaming has progressed forward significantly in terms of technology, presentation, and user experience since that era. Now, nostalgia is a powerful thing, and our collectively rose tinted glasses can cause us to overlook some of the blemishes in the classics. So, to counteract that, I’m going to identify some gameplay faux pas that existed in older jRPGs that we made sure to avoid.

#1 – The Grind - Aka, gameplay padding, aka filler content, aka real life level gaining experience immersion sequence.

Prior to, say, 1997 virtually every RPG required you to grind for experience. A lot. Upon reaching a new area, RPGs tended to create an implicit level barrier in this way: 1) introducing new enemies who curbstomp your helpless party members. 2) Introducing new, extremely pricey equipment which is necessary to prevent #1 from occurring. The end result is your little pixelated hero pacing back and forth in front of a town like a fool for hours on end in order to pass this plateau. While progression of stats is important in an RPG, forced grinding — aside from being tedious — tended to ruin the pacing of these old games’ already sparse plotlines.

#2 – Cryptic Directions (if any at all)

RPGs were once a niche genre here in the west. As a result, their localization budget was limited, which ended up with hilarious results. The mess of broken English, combined with minimalist plotlines about saving princesses, amounted to important characters giving you a vague outline of what needs to be done and then sending you on your way without any further clues.

What’s a hero to do after being given vague instructions and tasked with saving the future of mankind? Why, roam the countryside and interrogate townspeople for clues, of course! While exploration can be fun, it is also frustrating spending hours trying to figure what you’re supposed to do next… which is something that could be stated in a few lines of text in the first place!

#3 – Completely Mailed-In, Maze-Like Dungeons

In the olden days, memory was limited, so I can grant some leeway here. But still! There are innumerable 8-bit, and even 16-bit, RPGs, dating back to the very first Dragon Quest, whose dungeons were incredibly convoluted mazes using the same repetitive tiles. Even worse, many of them had limited visibility. Rather any engaging mechanics, dungeon design consisted of maze-like hallways leading to dead-ends. Oh, but these weren’t your conventional dead-ends. Sometimes you end up traversing several floors before you realize you were duped by a game designer who is maniacally cackling with glee.

I’m of the belief that not every area of a game needs to be mind-blowing, unique, or even memorable. However, a new dungeon should bring something new to the table and ideally be thematically tied to the story in some way. Nobody wants to go spelunking through dozens of identical looking maze-like caverns. Unless it’s Spelunky…

#4 – (Extremely) Limited Inventory

Items are important in an RPG. So, it logically follows that you should be given an extremely small amount of space to carry items on your long journey, correct? Of course not, silly! Alas, this was the norm for the then-emerging genre. Even titles as late as Pokemon Red/Blue suffered from this issue. But hey, if you quit being a stinking hoarder and use up those items, then limited space is not an issue! Oh, but they thought of that, too. You see, games like Final Fantasy II often littered your already cramped bag with indisposable key items that became dead weight after their plot related usage had passed. That meant scrolling through numerous useless items to even use a desired item in your pitifully limited inventory!

#5 - Few Opportunities to Save your Game

Saving used to be a privilege, not a right. Older RPGs tended to only allow you to save in key areas, such as the Mighty Royal Castle or the local inn. Fair enough. But from there, you need to slog through the 32 miles of swampland while facing hoards of undead and then climb a 32 floor tower to face the evil Tower Mage himself. Except you’re underleveled, because you didn’t grind, which means… you lose to Mr. Tower Mage. Guess what? You’re back to where you last saved, which was 2 hrs of gameplay ago. Uh oh, better do it again!

#6 – UI Clunkyness

User-interfaces in 8-16 bit RPGs ranged from god-awful to good. Most of them landed on the god-awful end of the spectrum, though. However, not all god-awful interfaces were created equal. The worst of the bunch were the Dragon Quest style games that required you to open a separate menu to interact with anything, with separate options for: talking, checking, and even climbing stairs. It was not uncommon for text-boxes to move unbearably slow, for combat actions to take way too long to execute, and for the explanations of items + magic to be all but non-existent. And for the love of God, I hope you don’t need to buy more than one potion at any given time, because you’ll be pressing the A button and going through a 15 second talking cycle for every single potion you need to buy. The best way of describe menu navigation in older jRPGs is cumbersome.

 

In spite of these shortcomings, I still love retro jRPGs. I even find the above traits endearing in a way. That being said, we as a team have made it a point to NOT to include such jRPG-isms, as we understand that a lot of them were smoothed out over time for a reason. To me, creating a retro game does not mean strictly staying retro in all respects for the sake of it, but combining the best of the old with the best of modern sensibilities.