Your Top 10 PSOne RPGs

[Compass]

There's an amazing amount of wisdom found in post #80 of this thread. You all would do well to read it.

[A Robot Bit Me]

You are Playing the Role of a jerk!

[bbobb]

SOTN is not a fucking RPG, enough of this bullshit people.


Next do you guys want to claim that Bionic Commando was an RPG? Ya know, you killed enemies and collected experience in the form of capsules that leveled up your HP... so I guess it must be an RPG as well.

[rezo]

When RPGs were introduced into Japan the definition of the genre was almost literally "games that contain elements seen in western RPGs." It had nothing to do with roleplaying, if a game contained leveling, dungeon crawling, treasure hunting/shopping, or any of the above there was a chance that it would be labeled an RPG.I think the idea was that a conventional RPG design wasn't interesting enough so they just mixed RPG-ish things into the types of games people were more familiar with. You can see this in the game design from the 80s, with RPG elements showing up in a large variety of genres: platformers where you purchase new armor/swords(there was even one awkwardly designed action platformer where it froze every time you killed an enemy to let you know how much XP you gained); characters leveled up in sports games, etc. Games like Symphony of the Night follow that kind of design philosophy and in that sense they share in the same history that eventually led to games like Dragon Quest dominating and eventually defining the genre. And of course, once the genre's style became more standard it ran in the direction of adventure games, focusing on improving the narratives/visuals/music while largely ignoring any roleplaying since that was never a big part of Japanese RPGs in the first place. A lot of the RPG-ish games(also: RPGs themselves) are classified under the much broader Simulation Game(SLG) genre.

Because of that kind of history I don't think it's bad to call something like SotN an RPG. It's not really necessary to argue it back and forth though; genre classifications are mostly about familiarity. If we were being really picky a lot of games we accept as RPGs wouldn't be, games we don't think of as RPGs(ie:Tokimeki Memorial) might be and "ridiculous puzzles" would probably be dropped from the list of elements that help define adventure games.

I think the history of RPGs in Japan is interesting though. I read up on it a while back after Neozeedeater mentioned some early Japanese computer RPG and I discovered that it appeared to be an adventure game where you sell condoms while having sex with prospective clients to show how well they work.

[bbobb]

I'm fucking in Japan and I've never seen Castlevania SOTN classified as an RPG.

If you're using the Japanese classification of RPG as justification to call it such then there's even more reason you're wrong.

[rezo]

Hi bbobb. Look:

メガドライブ版「VAMPIRE KILLER」の約3年後、'97年3月にPS版「悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲」がアクションRPGとして登場。敵を倒して得た経験値でキャラが成長し、主人公の能力が増えることで探索エリアが広がっていく本作の要素は、これ以降に登場するゲーム ボーイアドバンス作品にも継承される。

source

See? it's in Japanese. You are in fucking Japan and you have just seen it. It's the first result on google for Akumajyou Dracula series + Action RPG.

Keep in mind my point wasn't that "Japanese people call it an RPG, so I think it is." I just think games like it are a result of the broad approach Japanese developers took to RPGs early on, so I don't mind if it's included in the same group. It's connection to early RPGs isn't Dragon Quest, it's games like Zombie Hunter. Also I think these kind of nitpicky arguments about genre are stupid: if Symphony of the Night had a standard RPG top down view and was called "Alucard's Mysterious Castle" the amount of people saying it's not an RPG would drop significantly. I'm mostly just interested in the way RPGs and RPG elements developed and spread over there because they initially didn't approach them with a set of stringent guidelines.

[bbobb]

Well ya know what... I can't argue with ya on that one rezo, you proved me wrong. I concede my point I tried to make against you. My assholeness there was uncalled for. ごめんね。


I still say it ain't a fucking RPG though. It's an action adventure game with RPG elements.

[Scourge]

I don't give a shit about the history of Japanese games. We don't need a dissertation to know SotN is not a fucking RPG. It's not a fucking RPG. That's how we know.

[rezo]

I don't give a shit about the history of Japanese games.

That's as good a reason as any to not concern yourself with how a Japanese game from over a decade ago is classified.

[Scourge]

It's not about the game. It's about the stupidity of people.