Resuscitating the Classic RPG Genre

I am replaying FF9 and FF7 and I've taken notice of something. I haven't run into another game with as compelling a plot as either of these games. And it's something I believe developers have lost sight of in the wake of the leaps and bounds being made in technology.

When I played FF7, I really felt an emotional connection with each of the characters on some level. The plot was logical and very provocative. They achieved it through depth and thorough character development. And that goes beyond just the main character. Aside from the other protagonists, you witness the transformation of Sephiroth, one of the most notorious game villains of our time. As Cloud, you were there when Sephiroth was still sane, and you saw the events that caused him to snap. It built the tension and ultimately made for one hell of a climax.

The music score was right on point and matched the tone of the game at all times. I'm not exactly the most musically inclined person, but I do know when I hear good music and this game capitalized on it.

And the gameplay, although today might be considered archaic, has some elements which I believe would definitely make for a fantastic RPG and revitalize a dying breed.

For instance, the materia system has resonated deeply with me as a great feature to the game. In many cases today, we see it still fills a niche in certain games, such as Aion with its Stigma system. What I believe really set it apart from what other games had was the foundation that it had in the plot. It was a huge part of the plot and was far from being some sort of superfluous flare.

As for FF9, it had a few things that I truly believed made for a great game. Plotwise, it took what I saw in FF7 to another level. The degree of interaction you saw between NPCs increased. You see people walking around going about their business. People have names and in some cases have jobs, like Dante the Signmaker. They walked around and talked to each other. Sometimes, you'd see their conversations as you pass by. And the Active Time Events was a fantastic way to put you into the shoes of another character and allow for character development. That way, it felt more like a plot comprised of intertwining subplots.

And the Ability system? Vastly superior to any FF I have played thus far. It's better than the Materia system, License System (from FFXII), and the Sphere System (from FFX) because they required strategy. The fact that many games haven't used it makes it all the more refreshing an experience if it were to be used again. You simply equip something and carry it around for a while, gain AP from your grind sessions and learn the ability permanently. But you are limited in how many of the abilities you have that you can equip. Then as you level up, you are gradually granted more AP socket thingies so that you can branch out in skill. Certainly beats biting off of the WoW skill tree concept. The fact that equipment with certain skills are limited to people who play a particular class or archetype means that you're essentially getting class skills. So when you're fighting monster after monster, it's more rewarding, in my opinion, then buying them from some trainer, and makes grinding seem more important.

Combat is probably the trickiest part of saving one of my most favorite genres. Perhaps Kingdom Hearts had the most refreshing combat systems. The problem I had with it is that in the middle of battle, if you wanted to do something besides casting a spell or using an item, you would have to be idle for a brief moment and switch to the directional pad.

What if you employed a KH-esque combat style? But instead of opting for the directional pad, you used one of the buttons to cycle through the commands. You wouldn't have to take your thumb off the analog stick, then. Also, lock-on would still be avaliable so that running around wouldn't make you lose sight of your specific enemy. If you were using a Dualshock controller (I'll say DualShock2 cuz the third iteration has shitty R2/L2 buttons), for instance, you would cycle through the commands with the R2/L2 buttons. And you could switch targets with the R1/L1 buttons.

And opposing KH's button-mashing method, you would have an auto-attack. Attack would be selected to initated, though. Then you would deselect it to disengage or it would automatically end after the battle sequence was over. I guess the best example of this is FFXI.

But it seems that if I go any further, I may as well design my own game. This is wishful thinking, at best.