/vr/ - Retro Games

...have you got a theory?

>>9136480
People don't want difficulty in their RPGs. The genre is basically video game comfort food. There's some exceptions (SMT is the big one) but it's applicable for most of them.

>>9136480
jrpgs were never hard, they were grindy. by their design they're almost impossible to make difficult, they don't have builds, they don't have choice, they barely have stats or combat interactions. They have level gating, and some of them have extremely basic role implementations, but nothing is ever more difficult than "use fire on ice monster." it's just whether you've hit the level the game decided you need to be at to kill something. Around the mid and late 90s, they replaced all the pointless grinding game time with more cutscenes and anime tier character exposition.
>>9136531
this only applies to jrpgs, whose fanbase is 95% children and salarymen who want to unwind after working/studying for 14 hours that day. most RPG players are autistic munchkins

>>9136480
The common sense or collective conscious of gamers improved vastly afterwards, usually due to experience and access to information. From my own experience FF7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 can have hard parts / filters if you are playing blind as a child, but if you have prior experience they aren't as hard.
As a kid I talked to many others who got filtered at the last dungeon of FF7, Sephiroth, leveling too much in FF8, many bosses including Antlion in FF9, Yunalesca, Seymour, etc... I went over to people's houses just to beat bosses for them. One kid had some cheat device, I think it was called Goldfinger or something, and could max your stats and he still couldn't beat the last boss or 8, then I had to help someone beat the last boss of 9, etc... Besides all that, theSe games offer all the options to makw a playthrough difficult if you are willing to commit to it. It's only 13 where they shit the bed.

>>9136557
We get it, you don't like 'Jarpigs' and have spent years of your life squealing this out to anyone who will read your posts.

>>9136561
Wow you caught me look at all these jrpgs I hate.
Couldn't possibly be that someone here
can objectively look at things instead of being a deranged manchild

>>9136480
I know you want to pander since the cool kids like V, but V is not hard especially compared to IV.

>>9136578
>a collector
>not a deranged manchild
Pick one.

>>9136561
JRPGs are probably the one genre on this board where people won't sperg out if you cheat, because yeah they're pretty gratuitous about time-wasting

>>9136582
Yes, I collected those games when I bought them or received them as gifts 20+ years ago. Anything else retarded you'd like to post?

>>9136585
If you collect videogames, you are in fact a manchild.
Btw, I'm not the one who argued with you.

>>9136480
>after
What? I love FFV, it's one of my favorite all-times, it is not a hard game however. If you're going to start an observation of declining difficulty, it's not starting from AFTER FFV.

>>9136480
>Why did this series plummet after FFV?
Fixed that for you

>>9137238
FFV can be tough at multiple points in a first time playthrough. This is, granted, if you don't use a walkthrough and play it blind like it was meant to.

>>9137494
That can be said about any FF.
FFV is not hard, compare it to IV.

>>9136480
FF games are played for 'mainly' relaxation. You can go out of your way to make them challenging or not, depending on the player. Its probably why the games are so successful.

>>9136528
.... a gametheory?

>>9136480
2, 3, and 5 weren't ported to the US explicitly because the japs felt they were too difficult for a Western audience. Once they found out all their games we're gonna go global, they adjusted the difficulty as such.

>>9136579
>>9137748
IV is the easiest of the retro ones. Just because it had the difficulty dumbed down twice doesn't mean it's particularly harder than the others.
V on the other hand is as hard or easy as you want it to be depending on your party.

>>9137854
What a dumb post. 5 is easier than 4. Yeah, if you want to do a shitty build, it can be hard.

>>9136480
Because difficulty of the entire genre continuously decreased as a whole generation after generation. There are exceptions of course, though mostly niche games, but overall Famicom JRPGs are the hardest, then difficulty took a step down on SNES, then again on PS1, then again on PS2, etc

If you look at games like Final Fantasy 2 and 3, Mother, Dragon Quest 2, etc, everytime you will hear about the audiance complaining to the devs that "waaa the games are too hard especially the end!!!", so little by little the devs listened, and difficulty kept going downhill.

Along that trend, gameplay kept taking a step down in favour of "story" and players just "seeing the content", and now the norm is you don't even have random encounters anymore and for re-releases of older games they add cheats to max out everything that they call "features" (aka features to "fix" the "antiquated bad game design") so that the current day player who doesn't even know jRPGs could have interesting/engaging/challenging gameplay don't come crying on the publishers' twitter accounts.

People like to blame this on the genre itself like it is flawed by design, but truly the fault falls back on players complaining. They are the reason why gameplay in the genre went on a downward spiral, and it's still a thing today, on one side you still have players complaining about "waaa this old game is too grindy", on the other side you have the ones who use every cheat/exploit/guides they can find on their first playthrough.

Finally it is worth noting that while in general JRPGs are being singled out for their low difficulty, it is the entire medium that went through the same process of general decrease in difficulty generation after generation, no matter the genre.

>>9136480
The only hard FF game is 4, not sure where you're getting the idea that the series in general is hard.

>>9136578
>sports games
Yeah I agree, it's JRPGs that are the problem

>>9136559
I was that kid too for FF8, a guy at school couldn't beat the boss of disc 1 so he gave me his memory card and I had to junction his setup for him. Turns out he had left GFs on unused characters at that point, no wonder he wouldn't make it, had to draw a bit of magic for him too.

Then it happened again with a couple of younger kids I barely knew who were stuck on the disc 3 boss.

A year before that I was the one asking advice about FF8 with older kids but they were gone to highschool at that point

>>9138392
Not so related but I still remember two kids desperately calling me because they didn't know how to beat Fortune from MGS2, lmao.

>>9137750
Pretty much. No sane person plays Final Fantasy for a challenge. You play it for the story and characters, nice music and pretty graphics.

Are any of the early ff games good? I only played 6,7,9 and 10. Nobody really talks about them even here so I always assumed they were shit

>>9138392
>>9138418
Some guy bought MGS and asked me to play it and beat it before he even played it. He watched as if it was a movie, just like the devs intended.

Also everybody in school asked me to trade my GT1/2 saves because I had all the licenses.

I guess normies are pretty bad at gaming yeah.

>>9138426
2 is the most divisive one, but the others are solid.

>>9138426
The 3 NES/Famicom ones are the bests really, playing the PlayStation versions of 1 and 2 is also an acceptable substitute, they're almost identical to the originals gameplay wise except with a couple of optional additions and bugfixes

>>9138475
Had the same experience with MGS, although after one playthrough I wanted the other ending and all the items so I played it in front of him all day and by the end of it he was tapping out, lmao.
>>9138426
If you're into those kinds of games you'll probably enjoy them. 1-5 each have their own fans who say one is their favorite, but also be aware of the different version, me personally, I just play the original first. The other versions have their good points (usually) though.