I'm glad a thread like this exists; I've been wanting to natter about old JRPGs for a while but I just don't know if a thread about it would have much reason to exist but since I have a platform to waffle a bit I just wanted to say I'm surprised how magnificently Final Fantasy I and Dragon Warrior I have aged. I've been a bit bored of current games recently so I thought I'd take a shot at playing through some older entries in series I like so in the last month or so I've got through Final Fantasy I and II and the first Dragon Warrior and yeah, they've aged pretty solidly. As much as I find it difficult to adjust to the aimlessness of the games I've definitely found some elements of them very absorbing.
The stand-out surprise for me though was Final Fantasy II, which always seems to be a bit maligned on the internet but I found its approach towards levelling and stat-grinding to be incredibly satisfying and very much like modern WRPGs while the conversation mechanic felt like a very natural way to integrate in a way to explain plot. In some ways I think it was a bit before its time and I think it's a bit of shame it doesn't have a very positive legacy.
As for weirder Westerns (not necessarily Weird West, just... odder games) how about Red Dead Revolver, which has some relatively normal bits but does also feature a man who replaces his arm with a cannon and a section in which a gunslinger fights off a troupe of circus performers who apparently have actual powers rather than stage tricks, or if you can get a copy, Samurai Western, which is a criminally-underrated game in which a samurai travels to the Old West to hunt down a rogue samurai-turned-gunslinger but along the way fights steampunk robots and an outrageously (and dare I say very un-PC) camp French warrior with a taste for Georgian fashion and huge not-period-accurate miniguns. It's a strange game but it does have massively satisfying combat, a solid difficulty curve and shedloads of replayability.
The stand-out surprise for me though was Final Fantasy II, which always seems to be a bit maligned on the internet but I found its approach towards levelling and stat-grinding to be incredibly satisfying and very much like modern WRPGs while the conversation mechanic felt like a very natural way to integrate in a way to explain plot. In some ways I think it was a bit before its time and I think it's a bit of shame it doesn't have a very positive legacy.
As far as Westerns go, have you tried Gun? It's fairly old now - a 2005 release - but I've always thought that was pretty much a standout as far as Western-set games go.Ryallen said:
As for weirder Westerns (not necessarily Weird West, just... odder games) how about Red Dead Revolver, which has some relatively normal bits but does also feature a man who replaces his arm with a cannon and a section in which a gunslinger fights off a troupe of circus performers who apparently have actual powers rather than stage tricks, or if you can get a copy, Samurai Western, which is a criminally-underrated game in which a samurai travels to the Old West to hunt down a rogue samurai-turned-gunslinger but along the way fights steampunk robots and an outrageously (and dare I say very un-PC) camp French warrior with a taste for Georgian fashion and huge not-period-accurate miniguns. It's a strange game but it does have massively satisfying combat, a solid difficulty curve and shedloads of replayability.
