Friday, August 10, 2007

Their ages show.

Despite believing that PSX was generally a better platform for RPGs than the SNES, the games for the older system have aged better than those of the PSX, at least technically. The games of the PSX generation just have substantially more depth to both their gameplay and storylines, but long load times, slow text speeds, and blurry sprites have made a large cross-section of the PSX catalogue nearly unplayable. I fucking loved Xenogears back in the day, but the game is even harder to get into all these years later.

The cream of the crop, however, hasn't aged nearly as bad.
*Final Fantasy IX- Slight lag in the battle system can be annoying, but the load times are relatively small.
*Final Fantasy Tactics- Hasn't aged bad at all. Still a visual and aural treat.
*Persona 2- The battle system feels a little bit less polished than if it were to be published today, but still has far more depth than the vast majority of RPGs.

Most of the Squaresoft RPGs from the SNES area are as good as ever, technically speaking, but the gameplay is a bit simplistic by modern standards.
*Final Fantasy IV- Great music and storyline, but the lack of party selection or skill development makes the gameplay the most simplistic of any FF.
*Final Fantasy VI- Still a great game, in general.
*Chrono Trigger- suffers from the same simplicity problems that FF4 has.

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