A Letter to the JRPG: I'm Sorry

I was recently playing Beyond Good & Evil HD, when during an action-packed chase sequence my screen went black and my 360 controller began vibrating nonstop. I sat dumbly for a minute, refusing to believe the last hour I had played just vaporized before my very eyes; when finally I vaulted off the couch, cursing the bad luck and manually turned off my Xbox. I then remembered I had Magna Carta 2 in the disc drive and thought I'd give that a whirl in favor of replaying the last hour of my life. Okay, so BG&E is a classic, a must play, a creative gift from Michel Ancel that helped keep him relevant after Rayman's magic had begun to fade; but I was in the mood for immediate gratification, and the thought of losing another hour to a random game crash was obviously unappealing.

So Magna Carta 2 it was; and now we come closer to the point of this posting.

I never had chance to play the first Magna Carta, though I always kept it on my radar in case funds allowed. Alas, other games caught my fancy at the time and I never worked it in to my gaming budget. Time passed, and the JRPG began to fade from American shelves in favor of games such as Knights of the Old Republic, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and a handful of others. Without realizing it, what I had come to expect from an RPG had begun to change. I wanted to roam free in large worlds, take part in branching dialogue trees that determined if I was good or evil (or just meh, as the case was sometimes), and I wanted to own my character in a way that had never been done before - i.e., customized armor and weapons with immediate cosmetic effects, and unique facial features courtesy of a nearly limitless character generator. I also began to turn my nose up at what used to be my old favorites. When I poured over my old game collection, which happens on a regular basis, I would find myself looking at the cover of games like Final Fantasy VII and thinking to myself how limiting those games were, and how I much preferred open-world exploration and taking part in side-quests that were actually entertaining. In short, JRPG's could keep their linear progression - all I wanted was open countryside. I never forgot about my desire to play the first Magna Carta, I just stopped caring about it.

And then, one day while I was perusing the local Walmart's bargain bins for games I had missed out on, I came across Magna Carta 2. For a moment I was transported back to 2005, and despite my recent opinions on the JRPG genre, I felt compelled to give this game a go for old time's sake. Sure, it wasn't the one I had been eyeballing back in 2005, and it wasn't the first American entry in the series, but it received tolerable reviews and it was only twenty bucks. I left Crackdown 2 sitting on that shelf at Walmart and went home with my old girlfriend, the JRPG.

For some of you schooled game enthusiasts out there who are crying foul right now, let us clear something up before I continue: the Magna Carta series is a South Korean-developed franchise, and is technically not a Japanese Role-Playing Game. I realize this. It does, however, emulate the essence of the genre to an extent that it is indistinguishable from a true JRPG. If someone had told me that Softmax was a Japanese developing house after I had played this game I would have been completely convinced by it. Now moving on...

I began Magna Carta 2 with limited expectations, knowing full well what I was getting into. Sure enough, after finding out my main character had amnesia and was about to be swept up into a world-saving epic story that involved buddying up with a princess I had to stifle some groans before I trudged ahead. Now, roughly twenty-five hours into the game, I would like to retract any negative thoughts I had on the genre and admit that, okay, I still like my good old JRPG's. Let's admit it, gamers are a fickle bunch, and when it comes to new and amazing technology I'm as guilty as the rest. Sure, Oblivion is much more immersive than Final Fantasy VII in terms of its environment; but these are also vastly different games and vastly different experiences, which is something I failed to take into account until recently. You might be saying, "But they're both role-playing games! It's still the same genre!" Fair enough, sir or madame, but I disagree. Gears of War is certainly not Call of Duty despite the heavy focus on guns and shooting things with those guns. They do share many similarities, but they also feel vastly different than each other, and I think that is something only a true gamer can recognize. It's similar to a wine enthusiast saying this brand is nothing like another brand - the average person may think they are identical in color and taste, but the wine enthusiast knows better and sips smugly knowing that he/she knows better, that he/she has discovered something few people can appreciate.

And so I plan on smugly playing Magna Carta 2, and eventually I hope to pick up Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata as well. I also own but never finished the Xenosaga games, which is a shame, and easily fixable considering I can get through the admittedly disappointing second entry. So what's the draw to this genre then? For me it is the sense of immediacy they mostly share. The western RPG has a definite story to tell, but it also lets you roam and if your attention span is tenuous allows you to meander down a path far away from the main quest line, so much so that it can be easy to forget why the hell your character made it to where they were in the first place. This is something I love about western RPG's; but this lack of immediacy can also be considered a fault in terms of storytelling, which is where the JRPG steps in. The JRPG is, in most cases, completely in love with its own story and guides you through it unapologetically. Many critics bash this genre on its linearity, which is actually a characteristic I now appreciate after spending many hours wandering aimlessly in the wastelands in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Playing a JRPG is akin to reading a novel, sure it's a novel that's been written many times before, but if you let yourself forget tired conventions (ahem, amnesia) and just try to enjoy the ride for what it is you may find something other gamers cannot see for themselves; or, in my case, you may find something that you have forgotten to appreciate. JRPG - I'm sorry.