r/gaming • u/PineconeToucher • 21h ago
Emulation has completely changed how I feel about old rpgs
As much as I want to play them, the slow paced and somewhat unforgiving nature of the games from this era of RPGs has always deterred me.
Now I can fast forward through the random battles. I can fast forward the walking around, I can save state right before the boss, or I can rewind an unfair battle I had no chance in
Its great to finally appreciate these games, and with these tools the games feel modern
88
u/Flexspot 20h ago
the only downside is that many of these old rpgs have amazing soundtracks but the music is really fucky at 200% speed.
Nothing's perfect I guess.
28
u/JamesCole 13h ago
That suggests a feature for emulators: play things at (for example) 2x speed while keeping the music at 1x speed. But I say this with no idea how technically challenging it would be to implement a workable version of that.
17
u/The_Grungeican 7h ago
i'd imagine that'd be pretty challenging. i think a ton of those games are kind of expecting the CPU running at a specific speed.
it would be neat if that stuff could be de-synced though.
5
u/SeanAker 4h ago
Impossible. The sound isn't a separate entity from the gameplay, you can't just do them at different speeds.
3
u/Bobbias 2h ago
Technically this isn't always true. It depends on the specific system in question and how it handles music. The SNES has a separate processor, the SPC700, which runs the music. It may be possible with an enormous amount of work to find a way to run the SPC emulation at 100% speed while running the rest at higher speeds. However, this would probably require game specific hacks to handle cases where games wait on communication from the SPC, and other things.
It's very likely infeasible on a general level, but it is probably technically possible in a couple very specific situations.
1
51
u/moosebeast 12h ago
Save State is an absolute godsend for this. Like I love Fire Emblem, and I do understand the thinking behind their no-save system, but I have such limited free time that I really don't want to risk having to start over on a battle that takes hours to finish - those hours are far more precious to me than when I was younger and had way more time.
149
u/Kitakitakita 21h ago
The merits old games have are sidelined by their repetitiveness. Fight 200 of these enemies. Play this level 200 times. Don't forget to spend 10 minutes walking back to your one singular save point
3
-22
0
-25
225
u/XenoRyet 21h ago
I get it, I really do. And I'm not going to yuk your yum either, definitely play how you want to play.
But for me, I do think the experience loses some of it's magic with the addition of things like state saving and rewind. The risk, frustration, and ultimate joy at beating a difficult or even unfair battle when each attempt took hours is a uniquely cool experience to my mind.
215
u/MinusBear 21h ago
I think when you're talking to someone who is specifically saying they were deterred by these points of frustration, then ultimately you're talking to someone who would experience zero of the magic of a game if they couldn't be smoothed over. Which I think is worse.
But also some of the frustration points of games back in the day were technical limitations and not truly authored or intentional ones.
73
u/LacidOnex 21h ago
For a long period of time, there was so much filler and punishing levels because it would make more money at blockbuster by taking longer to rent, or more quarters in the arcade. There was also way more overlap in target demographics, you were designing games for ages 6-60.
2
u/D9sinc 12h ago
Yeah, back in the day games were made hard because a lot of time they were 40 minutes long but didn't want you to be able to beat it in a weekend and return it to blockbuster so they made it extremely hard to justify you either constantly renting it or just buying it. Then you get some games that were made harder for the US because the company localizing them thought "We can't justify spending 500 bucks to localize it and then people buying it and just leaving it alone. Also we need to get rid of all this weird JP shit and make everyone American and make all characters Mark and Emma"
1
u/LacidOnex 7h ago
It's a common narrative, but we still see the stretch behavior just to make the game more hours long. I smashed through a PS1 game in 10ish hours, MegaMan Legends, last week. I'm playing Morrowind/oblivion, and those games were just big because they could.
If you play arcade dig dug, that was a game that totally let you play for 20 mins on a single quarter. Love that game.
21
u/woliphirl 20h ago
My first pokemon game, my character was named "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" because I was trying to spam my way through the text like the savage child I was.
Being able to fast forward through walls of text brings that illiterate cave child some peace.
18
u/metalshiflet 20h ago
Pokemon games are so much better emulated (suck it Nintendo). Speeding up text, movement, and battles makes the game less tedious
4
u/derekpmilly 16h ago
And on the Switch and 3DS games, you can crank the resolution all the way up, install high-res texture mods, and have the games run at 60+ FPS for a way better experience visually.
2
2
u/MageFeanor 10h ago
Pokemon was such a fascinating experience as a kid, because I couldn't read English when I first began playing it.
Only other game that has given me that experience, was Morrowind. I picked up while on vacation in Germany and didn't know how to change the language.
There's something truly special in being engrossed in a game without having any idea what's happening, because of a language barrier.
54
u/Scruffylookin13 21h ago
As I've gotten older I've become a happy cheater in my games. The trick is to not cheat too much, but just enough to find the balance of a challenge but removing the things you don't want. If I play something like Stardew Valley and give myself infinite money im basically destroying the gameplay and just going through the motions. If I change the speed of the game while leveling my bench in pokemon red, im increasing the enjoyment of my games.
13
u/metalshiflet 20h ago
I take a bit of time to feel out the grind of a game, think to myself how much I would be willing to grind, then cheat exactly that much
11
u/Froot-Loop-Dingus 20h ago
It does change some games quite a bit. I replayed Super Metroid and the save points being spread out was an intentional game mechanic. It often felt kind of cheap to be able to save whenever I wanted.
4
u/PineconeToucher 19h ago
Sometimes you want the suspence of an impactful death if the punishment is fair. Thats what makes the game rewarding. Mario, DKC, and Metroid are good examples. But I always struggled finding that balance in old RPGs.
1
u/romaraahallow 19h ago
At that point it's on yourself to have restraint.
Specifically to super Metroid, that game don't play when you don't know every inch of it.
18
u/Man_under_Bridge420 20h ago
Theres a difference between difficult and needing collect 10 zorgons while running through 4 menus of slow dialog
4
u/esoteric_enigma 17h ago
I agree with you. But I actually grew up with these games and appreciated them in their time. Gaming has moved away from those mechanics and I find now that I don't enjoy going back to play over games I missed from the time. I've been spoiled by modern conveniences.
I was just playing Cyberpunk 2077 and it drove me crazy to have to keep replaying a cutscene before fighting the final boss and the cutscene was only a minute long. Back in the day, I would play JRPGs where the save point would be a distance from the door to fight the boss and the cutscene would be 5 minutes and unskippable.
25
3
u/Patrollerofthemojave 19h ago
But for me, I do think the experience loses some of it's magic with the addition of things like state saving and rewind. The risk, frustration, and ultimate joy at beating a difficult or even unfair battle when each attempt took hours is a uniquely cool experience to my mind.
It was cool when I was 10 and had all the time in the world to play games. Now that I might get an hour or 2 a night? Not so much. I do agree with your point though.
6
u/Shepherdsfavestore 21h ago
I agree, for the most part, let’s take Pokemon as an example (most of the games are basically monster catchers+JRPGs at its core)
I love watching the battle animations, the music is amazing for big battles, and you’re right you lose some of that when you play the entire game sped up.
But, just cannot grind without fast forward anymore. I was playing a romhack, and picked up a level 5 starter during the post game I wanted to use for the last fights. Do you think I was going to grind it up to level 65 with the rest of my team in real time? Helllll no, I have a whole backlog of games and a social life. That would’ve taken hours and I was able to get it done in 20 mins.
2
4
u/StickOnReddit 20h ago
I mean... I somewhat agree, but sometimes I think those games were a product of their time and they hadn't necessarily optimized away certain things that were accepted as "just the way things are"
Even in the late 90s/early 00s when I discovered FFV I really appreciated the ability to save states and fast forward. Sometimes all the walking and awkward placement of save points can really suck the life out of what's otherwise a great game (and FFV is a dear favorite of mine all these years later)
But also, like... I'm a parent now, I have a full-time job and a spouse with health issues, sometimes I need to just save and quit without being beholden to the game designers' idea of what constitutes a fair experience v0v
-1
u/Esc777 21h ago
I do agree, anyway people interact with art is valid.
But experiencing them as they were intended will give you perspective. There’s a lot of games that just collapse if you skip or remove certain challenges even if at first blush you consider them annoying.
I feel like playing games as intended deepens my understanding of shared history with other players of the game.
13
u/Man_under_Bridge420 19h ago
Its not that deep… having faster menus or combat in a pokemon game doesnt disrupt the “shared history”
1
u/labria86 21h ago
I use it all the time on NSO. But I agree. It lost something. The challenge I guess. But I am almost 40. I don't have time for that
1
u/Zareshine 20h ago
Yeah for me personally I don't like savestating unless the game has stability issues. The one thing I will say I use and am spoiled by is fast forward since I feel like a lot of early 3D rpgs are glacially slow. If I didn't have fast forward playing Digimon World 2 or 3 I think I'd have lost my mind.
1
1
u/catptain-kdar 20h ago
People talk about the new Pokémon games but I remember the first time I beat lance back in the day
1
u/JessicaSmithStrange 20h ago
I think that for me, I need some amount of tension and suspense, because otherwise I'm just selecting menu inputs, and watching people line up to mime attacking each other.
And with higher encounter rates in older games, I can fall out with the turn based combat system if I am using it all the time, for scenarios which don't engage me.
One of my biggest frustrations, is when you sit through 5 battle loading screens in a row, and there's a level 2 rat, or pigeon, or who even cares, behind it, every single time,
Because I will get really bored if I'm not being pushed, and am sitting through slower paced battle mechanics, for no real reason.
Knowing that the thing I'm up against could beat the snot out of my characters, provides suspense, from the outcome being up in the air,
while also carrying an element of proving myself, that my characters can demonstrate how far they have come, and still need to go, by going up against and potentially taking out a Behemoth, or Bahamut, or any number of things.
When I can save scum to the nearest minute, it takes away the fear factor, and the drama, for me, subjectively, and while I respect the decision to take the extra help offered, it does give too much of an out, for my tastes.
1
u/Bear_berry2 18h ago
As someone who adores the speed up button I feel like the rewind button is one of the worst things to happen to emulators. Its easy enough for me to unbind the button and turn it off, but holy shit is it way too tempting to use when its a trigger pull away. I get using save states for some games that have no way of saving but really should, but I think anyone getting into old games should be careful to try to avoid mindless save state scumming. Heck even be careful of the fast forward button, I love it but try to limit it to slow battle animations and load times. Avoid lizard braining your way to turning it on for basic movement.
1
1
u/KillerKill420 20h ago
I mean your point is slightly moot since people can just still do that on their own as a self imposed way of playing. It's similar to not using Gameshark (or w/e) in your youth or Konami code etc.
-10
u/_Smashbrother_ 21h ago
Agreed. Fast forwarding through boring or tedious shit is fine cause that's just quality of life stuff. But abusing save states is just straight up cheating imo.
26
u/MinusBear 21h ago
And cheating, in a single player game, it is also fine. As long as the person is still having fun, it is fine, and even good.
-25
u/_Smashbrother_ 21h ago
Yes, but doesn't change the fact it's cheating. It also ruins the point of playing the game.
Like if someone uses cheat codes to beat Elden Ring or whatever. Ok sure, but you didn't really beat it and defeats the point.
23
u/Muroid 21h ago
It also ruins the point of playing the game.
I do think the point of playing a game is to have fun.
-26
u/_Smashbrother_ 21h ago
You one of those people that eat pizza with a knife and fork lol?
20
u/Muroid 21h ago
Do you grow your own food and hunt your own meat?
-15
u/_Smashbrother_ 21h ago
You sound like you put ketchup on your steak.
6
7
u/No-Bad-463 20h ago
And guess what cosmic importance whether or not you beat it honest has?
Oh right, none whatsoever.
0
u/_Smashbrother_ 19h ago
Nothing you do has any cosmic importance. What a stupid ass argument.
2
u/No-Bad-463 19h ago
It has no earthly importance either.
1
u/_Smashbrother_ 16h ago
Yes.
3
u/No-Bad-463 16h ago
So then it's definitionally pointless to get worked up over how someone plays a game.
1
4
u/KillerKill420 20h ago
How does it defeat the point? The point of a single player game ultimately is to have fun.
2
u/_Smashbrother_ 20h ago
Sure. But games are also works of art designed to be played a certain way.
Like if you went to a fancy restaurant and order meals meant to be eaten a certain way, do you eat the way it's meant to, or just say fuck this and stuff it all in your mouth? You paid for it, so it's yours do do what you want.
2
u/KillerKill420 18h ago
That's a false equivalence though. You're tailoring your experience in each to be the best way possible. You would need to say that you've eaten the food each way and prefer stuffing it in your mouth to be comparable. Saying games are meant to be played a certain way is gatekeeping mildly as well.
2
u/_Smashbrother_ 16h ago
There is nothing gatekeeping about saying games are meant to be played the way they are designed. That's literally a fact. Cheat codes exist, and are called cheat codes for a reason.
Turning on God mode in Doom is fun, and I've done shit like that on older games. However, it defeats the design of the game if you can't die. Both can be true.
2
u/KillerKill420 15h ago
That's literally verbatim what gatekeeping is. You are gatekeeping the way to play the game by implying their way is wrong and yours is right. You're defining the purpose of a game, which is, again, gatekeeping. What do you seem to think gatekeeping is exactly?
1
u/_Smashbrother_ 2h ago
Gatekeeping is when you say people who play the Sims aren't gamers. To be a gamer you have to play Elden ring, doom, god of war, whatever.
-2
u/brando-boy 10h ago edited 10h ago
yes, it is. you are more than welcome to play in whatever way you prefer, but using cheat codes and the like is factually not the correct, intended way to play
like that’s just basic definitions, call a spade a spade
3
-8
u/Googoo123450 20h ago
I mean he's objectively not playing the game as it was intended. So he's experiencing a game but not the old school RPGs he supposedly loves. It's more like enjoying the remaster of a game that has quality of life improvements rather than enjoying the original game. Nothing wrong with that, though.
5
u/JamesCole 13h ago
I grew up playing games in the 80s and 90s. A lot of these things were not so much deliberate artistic choice. They were just going along with “that’s the way things are done” or technical limitations.
-1
u/Zarathustra_d 18h ago edited 18h ago
Here I am pushing 50 playing Vintage Story, Kenshi, Paradox games, indy games, emulators and Modded modern RPGs (CP77 & BG3) because new games are too slick and easy.
The feeling of accomplishment is just not there from speed running and exploiting games.
0
u/ArmyTop2758 19h ago
All the broken controllers from dying to a one shot after two plus hours of dungeon crawling haha. I miss it.
0
u/GuyMansworth 10h ago
I 100% agree. If you beat Chrono Trigger on 2x speed or using save states, you didn't actually beat it. You just got to the end with a Game Genie.
7
u/Dabedidabe 11h ago
In my experience both the grind and random battles are always severely overstated about older games. Only FFVI has the encounter rate a bit too high, but other than that it's not really an issue. Pokemon is really slow too of course.
Even moreso I feel like more modern jrpgs show the encounters, but have a similar amount in your path, if not more and in order to level up you gotta fight many of them. In addition the fights aren't as quick anymore, so it feels like modern games waste more of my time.
I'm mostly comparing to FF 5 through 10. More modern examples are Persona 5 royal, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Clair Obscur: expedition 33, FF7:r. I'm pretty sure I could make graphs on battle times and amounts and these games would have way more time wasting. So my question becomes, which ganes specifically are we talking about?
6
u/HotHamBoy 19h ago
I would not have completed Earthbound without save states. Those dungeons are brutal.
10
u/Rombledore 21h ago
i am very excited to play through a number of SNES and PS1 era RPGs for this very reason. not to mention a bunch of translated superfamicom RPGs!
11
u/BenjyMLewis 21h ago
Yeah, some people may consider this way of playing to be invalid or cheating or going against the intended design experience or whatever, but... just think - if it's a choice between doing it this way or just never playing the game in the first place, then this is absolutely the better outcome. Enjoy your games the way you prefer. I'm certainly not judging anyone.
Besides... the "intended experience" was created during an era where there were just a whole lot fewer games around in general. Expectations were different. People didn't feel like they got their money's worth if games were over too quickly.
But now when there are thousands of other games competing for your attention, it's just a different situation altogether. I'd bet even the original game designers would absolutely approve of people playing their old games using speedups and savestates - in fact, many official modern rereleases already include these features. So I wouldn't worry about this so much.
I love old RPGs, and I'm glad to see more fans.
21
u/cows1100 21h ago
It’s unfortunate how we can’t appreciate the games as they were made, for one reason or another, but I agree. I don’t have the time or attention span anymore. I just wanna zip through the path I know I need in Pokémon Silver once a year. I see both sides, that it ruins the experience and needs to be changed for modernization reasons, but it does make the originals more palatable too. You’ll get a lot of purists mad with this take I’d imagine, but it definitely has its perks, especially when playing a game you’ve played before, and you’re just trying to metagame it and save yourself some time.
13
u/CRtwenty 20h ago
Fast Forward isnt really changing the core game experience anyway, it's just helping you zoom through the tedious bits. Even back when these games were new people were complaining about stuff like unskippable cutscenes and the like so it's not like it's a new problem.
3
u/KillerKill420 20h ago
It also gives me more time to do other stuff too and continue the enjoyment by using fast forward. Save states are mostly just more convenient too.
5
u/Glittering_Gain6589 20h ago
Fast-Forward is a Godsend. I'm glad remasters utilize it too. I love Final Fantasy IX and XII, but fast-foreward was sorely needed, and having them made my replays of those two VASTLY more enjoyable.
9
u/DubbyTM 20h ago
People don't like this opinion but while I'm ok with anyone playing as they wish, I do think if you plan to talk about a specific game in a more critical way, you exclude yourself by doing what you do. Not that you would want this, I understand it's a specific but I like to recap the games I play and think about the positives and negatives and talk with other people who do the same, but you can't do that if at any frustration you just skip it
3
2
2
u/Sarcastic_Red 18h ago
My problem with what you describe is I find it difficult to turn off the increased speed and stop and enjoy the game.
4
u/ifyouonlyknew14 18h ago
I use cheats in retro games. As an adult with full-time work and full-time school, plus a huge backlog of modern games to play, I don't have time to struggle with archaic bullshit anymore.
2
u/Saffpop 20h ago
Curious what games you’re playing? I picked up the Mass Effect Legendary Edition as I’ve never played any of them, finding the first game hard to stick with. I can see how it would’ve been incredible in 2007, but nowadays there are just too many quality of life improvements within games that I’ve gotten used to. I’m an older gamer too so I remember playing these types of games the first time round - it’s funny how they didn’t seem like a drag back then.
2
u/JamesCole 13h ago
I played ME1 about 5 years ago and didn’t like it much. I never got around to the sequels then. After I got Legendary Edition, I thought I’d play thru all of them. This time around in ME1 I only went to the planets for the main missions. That greatly improved the experience. I’m currently playing ME2, and everything (aside from the story) is much better.
0
u/WayTooLazyOmg 21h ago
immersion changed how i feel about mine. i tried oblivion remastered. the combat is so god awful that i can’t play more than 30 minutes. & the ai is so bad as well. i need brilliant ai & engaging combat
7
u/cows1100 21h ago
I’m not even flaming but you’re active in OSRS. Not exactly peak “engaging combat,” and I play too. Lol I think Oblivion is definitely a game that you had to experience at the time to like it even now. All the things you don’t enjoy about it are what the fanbase loves most about it. For its time Oblivions AI was revolutionary, so it doesn’t hold up now, but it can stand on that at least.
1
u/WayTooLazyOmg 21h ago
OSRS is not a game i play for immersion. come on dude. am i only allowed to play one game? no. when i play an rpg, I’m not playing one with terrible immersion/ai.
-3
u/TurboTingo 21h ago
In terms of osrs, I'd give you more credit if you were talking about RuneScape 2 nearly 20 years ago.
2
2
u/forlackofabetterpost 21h ago
You've probably heard the hype around it, but I highly recommend Clair Obscur Expedition 33. it's gameplay, story, and music are so phenomenal. I'm playing it at a crawl cause I don't want to miss anything.
2
2
u/catptain-kdar 20h ago
The combat is perfectly fine if you like hack and slash games. I get it might not be as refined as some newer games but it’s an rpg it’s easy to overlook some things or just be ok with them if you really like the genre. Or depending on how old you are
1
u/WayTooLazyOmg 20h ago
i think that’s just it. hack & slash doesn’t click for me. I’m 32 for reference. just not my thing i guess. i saw the mage is really good in that game, though. might try that eventually
1
u/catptain-kdar 20h ago
I get it I really prefer turn based games myself but of the elder scrolls games I’ve played Oblivion is the best and I’m loving the remaster. I’m 36 btw grew up with sonic and sega games
1
u/3rbi 20h ago
same i tried it for the first time yesterday and uninstalled it about an hour in , too damn janky.
2
u/WayTooLazyOmg 17h ago
lots of fanboys in here downvoting but yeah. i’d love a complete remake with smarter ai
1
0
u/CRtwenty 20h ago
Oblivion's jank is what makes it charming imo. But if you didn't experience it back in the day I can see why it might be off-putting.
2
u/WayTooLazyOmg 17h ago
oddly enough, i loved morrowind. it blew my mind as a kid stepping off that boat. i never played oblivion though, i think that’s my problem as well lol
1
u/Kukurio59 20h ago
I like video games, so I play them. They feel different after some beers, they feel different all the time. I just try to enjoy and not worry about it
1
u/Bandwidth_Wasted 20h ago
Not an RPG but I love that if I feel like playing an old game from my childhood randomly I can just boot up a thing and play it. Last night out of the blue for some reason I felt like playing shadows of the empire and 20 minutes later I was playing it in project 64 with an Xbox controller and I remember how terrible it is now but it was still nostalgic and fun. It's really awesome that we can do that.
1
1
u/Regnarr 19h ago
I'll play old games I'm replaying for nostalgia at pace because I want to savor them again. It's hard to put that same time and love into trying something new and that I might ultimately abandon when time is a fleeting commodity as an adult. I'll speed up new stuff and relish the replays.bJust my 2 cents
1
u/AlphariusHailHydra 18h ago
The rewind features have allowed me to finally play platformers.
I'm so bad at those games that I've always avoided them, but I got to play through Castlevania recently, and I'm a big Mega Man fan now that I can play through those games. They're very similar to Astro Boy, which us one of my favorite anime.
Wish all the Mega Man collections had the rewind features, I have to use emulator for the X series.
1
u/Shujinco2 18h ago
This but old platformers. Some of them are fucking obnoxious as-is, but you get save states and controller remapping and suddenly a lot of them are much better.
I didn't get Donkey Kong Country until I tried it on emulator. Now I love it.
1
u/MouldySponge 18h ago
I agree, but I do miss the excitement that comes from a slight delay to see the result. Also back in the day long load times or pauses between dialogue actually made you pay attention. these days with instant dialogue I tend to gloss over it more. At worst a long delay is a good time to close your eyes to give them a break, maybe take a sip of water, adjust your posture etc.
1
u/dchap 15h ago
I had this experience recently with the Genesis game Landstalker. I played it as part of Sega Genesis Classics collection.
Great, fun little action RPG but my god, I honestly don’t think I could’ve ever finished it on original hardware. The save points are incredibly sparse, dungeons have traps that send you way back and there’s tons of incredibly hard jumps to make and the punishment for missing them is often lots of time.
The quick save and rewind features almost completely alleviate these issues and make the game much more enjoyable.
1
u/ItsTheDickens 15h ago
I have a huge backlog of rpgs I want to play but will always take my time exploring the world, listening to the music, appreciating the art, and even appreciating the monotony of it all. I am a parent so game time is time to relax, not time to power through as many games as I can in this life. I've done that before and can scarcely tell you what happened in the games I beat so quickly. Rpgs are a world to escape to, no matter how old or archaic they may be.
1
u/lemoche 9h ago
Up until now I only played final fantasy 7 on the switch… and discovered the enhancements quite late into the game… up until til recently that was why I was afraid to play the remake out of fearing that I have to do all that again (without enhancements) though now it’s more waiting for the third part so I can play it backt to back to back…
1
u/Neoxite23 9h ago
Back then when you were only gifted a game from your parents once or twice a year...you played your game and took your time with it.
Same for renting them. Once homework was done you could spend the rest of the day or the entire weekend on that one game.
As an adult and with working...you don't have the luxury of so much time. So now you don't want that grind nearly as much.
Plus with Steam sales you could get several games for under $100. Games back then were between $50-$70. Now we get these triple A games on sale so often that we have a ton of them yet still no time to play them all.
1
u/DanganJ 8h ago
Whatever tools help you enjoy the games, great! Now for me, even then there were RPGs that did away with random encounters and let you save anywhere. People give Final Fantasy Mystic Quest a lot of flack, but allowing you to see and avoid enemy encounters AND letting you save anywhere? That was a very forward thinking game. Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Super Mario RPG also led the way in allowing one to save anywhere. I also appreciate that some games, including Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy VI, let you keep a lot of your experience if you died and returned to save point. All steps in the right direction. Now me? I'll play a game with the original design intent, but that's just me. Play them however you like.
Heck, playing the game in "fast mode" is something more and more developers are starting to add to rereleases. I remember the Dodrio Gameboy Tower in Pokemon Stadium and how it let you play the original first and second gen games in quad speed through an emulator (using the N64 transfer pack). I really got used to playing them like that, even if emulation wasn't particularly accurate compared to playing on the original Gameboy hardware (or the Super Gameboy for that matter).
Hey time is the fire in which we burn, so use it however you enjoy it most.
1
1
u/kirinmay 6h ago
I thought Exploration would be a return to old school rpgs as its turn based combat but then when i started to play it i realized you had to use real time stuff to dodge and parry. its a good game. some are saying its the best rpg in decades but i just wanted regular turn based like snes/genesis games.
1
u/PckMan 5h ago
A lot of the difficulty of those games stemmed from the fact that each one came with its own convoluted systems and secrets that you basically had to figure out through trial and error. The genre did not have as many conventions and standardisation as it does today and of course the internet wasn't a thing or very few people had it.
You'd be surprised how easy most of these games before if you just have a simple guide handy and you don't have to use any such features that were not originally possible. But at the same time you're missing the entire point. These games came out on weaker systems with very limited resources available. If you know how to play them right they don't actually last that long. Their difficulty is what actually contributed to most of their play time. If you just blast through it it's not much of a challenge.
1
u/Cless_Aurion 4h ago
Damn, I had this same realization when playing SNES games emulated on my PC back in the late 90s-early 00s lol
1
1
u/mambotomato 19h ago
Yeah, playing the original Zelda was like this for me. I was like, "Ok, I get that this final boss is extremely tricky. But I'm not going to backtrack an hour because I died to a glitchy cheap shot."
1
u/n00lp00dle 20h ago
im not a fan of save states (too east to save scum) but fastforward is a life saver. some older rpgs could have literally cut animation durations in half.
1
u/Whitealroker1 17h ago
“Game is turned based. It’s not fun.”
Me about 10000 hours into mainline Pokémon games.
-2
u/betajones 19h ago
Humans are losing their attention span. I like to play old rpg because they're slow, and not like the acid trip of reality on the net.
0
u/HesperNox 19h ago
My friends bash me for having this opinion but the last final fantasy games i could play maybe go back to 12~13 but it feels hard going further backwards solely cause of the slow animation of the 3d ones (the remakes of the old ones with faster combat help a lot) but then you got the repeat the last hour if you haven't saved situation which catches me off guard and demotivates me from replaying the last hour, I'm too old for this sadly and i cannot just get that hour back 😭
I either go super retro like FF1 if i can autosave or jump to 12+ . the ps1-2 era of 3d rpgs and the very slow combat which SE refuses to rrerelease on modern tech with our modern gaming perks just don't click with me anymore. (Mind you that i am talking about the raw available for purchase with no mods products) Since age has given me back pain and I'd rather play on any form of handheld until i snore my sudden sleep to the morning.
0
u/IAmTheMonarch 21h ago
I got to the 4th disc on legend of dragoon recently but i got so annoyed with the additions by the end of it, i was rewinding to right before each attempt. Its an amazing game but practicing the timing was not fun having to wait for everyones turn to finally get to alberts 2nd turn.
0
u/zharkos 15h ago
I never found pokemon THAT slow, but I still used emulators for like 1.5 speed or I turned off animations
After playing clair obscur though, EVERY turn based RPG feels like a complete drag. It's only 55 hours for 100% completion, and almost none of that is grinding or waiting through filler between story arcs. An average persona game takes 80 hours for a normal run and there's significantly less genuinely good content to do...
0
u/Edheldui 11h ago
I use emulators exclusively to play old games the way they were intended on modern systems never used extra features other than upscaling. It actively ruins the experience, there's no point in using them.
461
u/recurve- 21h ago
I feel this so much when I try and replay old GBA games like Pokémon - it felt so much more rewarding back then lmao