Thirty minutes. Thatās all I need. Thirty minutes to decide whether or not a role-playing game is worth playing.
Itās that first half-hour that comprises an RPGās most important moments. Itās when we meet our hero. Itās when we find out what he or she wants. Itās when weāre introduced to the gameās world and core mechanics. Itās when we fight for the first time. Itās when we start seeing the first roots of the story. Itās when we see and hear and play what weāll be seeing, hearing, and playing for the next 50-500 hours.
And when that first half-hour is boring, when a gameās first impressions are sub-par, thereās really no reason to stick with it.
That might seem unfair. After all, RPGs can run upwards of several hundred hours. To dismiss a massive game based on its first thirty minutes seems premature, like turning off a movie because you donāt like its opening credits.
But in an era where countless sources of entertainment are constantly vying for our attention, why should we accept any less? I donāt like wasting my time. If a gameās creators canāt make a good enough first impression to hook me in its first few minutes, why should I trust them with another few dozen hours of my time?
On a whim yesterday while doing some errands, I stopped by my local GameStop to see if they had anything interesting. (Although I try to avoid buying new games at GameStop because of their sketchy āguttingā policy, they sometimes have good used deals.)
So I got home, popped in the game, and watched the opening cinematic, which is super dramatic. Thereās a gun. Botched suicide. A raven-haired girl leaps from a tower as a pocket watch falls from her hands and shatters on the ground and a Bieber-haired boy charges to rescue her before she plummets to her doom. Itās all set under the luminous backdrop of what appears to be an 18th-century European city. Itās neat stuff.
As a general rule, JRPGs have a serious accessibility problem.
After these first few minutes, Iām taken to a house with three characters: a man I donāt recognize and a boy and a girl who may or may not be the boy and the girl from the intro. (I really canāt tell.) The man says something about needing to go out and suddenly Iām in control. There are no directions, no instructional prompts. No introductory sequences or explanations. I flip through the menus and see their names: Zephyr, Vashyron, and Leanne.
āCool,ā I think to myself. āIāll wander around and figure out whatās happening on my own.ā
This was a bad idea. A few minutes later (after heading to some sort of guild and accepting a few quests) Iām in a battle and I have no idea whatās happening. I try to target an enemy, aiming each characterās firing reticle with the X button and waiting for them to charge, but the bad guys interrupt every attack before it finishes. I start mashing buttons and moving my characters around, which makes weird red and blue lines appear on the screen. The game makes no attempt to explain whatās going on. I die several times.
With a reluctant sigh, I open up the menu screen and start up the tutorial, something I hate to do. A well-designed game eases you into its mechanics without forcing you to read supplementary materials.
The tutorial is 16 pages long. I immediately turn off Resonance of Fate
Look, tri-Ace. You guys might have devised the most brilliant battle system in the world. This game could be an absolute masterpiece, a triumph both narratively and mechanically. But if we canāt figure out how to play without suffering through endless chunks of instruction, why should we give it a chance at all?
I donāt think itās unfair to say that as a general rule, JRPGs have a serious accessibility problem. Because their stories and mechanics are often complicated and unfamiliar, they can feel obtuse. It can take a few hours to get the hang of them. This needs to change.
At this point you might be raising an eyebrow and picking up your pitchfork, ready to tear me down for daring to suggest that games be less hardcore. I am not saying games should assault you with prompts and baby-steps like Fi in Skyward Sword or any Zynga game ever. Nor am I suggesting that games should look more like this. But no game should require me to suffer through a lengthy instruction manual. I shouldnāt have to memorize a series of rules and commands with no context or escalation.
The best RPGs introduce themselves with grace and aplomb, guiding you through their world without making you feel like youāre holding their digital hands. Watch the introduction to Final Fantasy VII, for example. Weāre introduced to the city of Midgar and we get our first glimpse at one of the gameās most important characters, Aeris. We meet the āex-soldier.ā We get into a battle, which is quick and easy: all you have to do to win is press Fight. (The gameās more complex mechanics, like the Materia system, are introduced at a reasonable pace rather than all at once.)
A large part of Final Fantasy VIIās success draws from the fact that anyone can play it. You donāt have to be a genre expert or hardcore gamer to follow along with the adventures of Cloud and crew. You just have to dive in and pay a bit of attention. When a JRPG doesnāt pull this off, when it turns you off in its first few minutes because it is inaccessible or tough to follow, the genre suffers accordingly.
I havenāt given up on Resonance of Fate just yet. Iāll slog through its tutorials and try to master what appear to be some extremely unwieldy mechanics. But Iām already mad at it. Thatās the power of a bad first impression.
Random Encounters is a weekly column dedicated to all things JRPG. It runs every Friday at 3pm ET.
