I always loved retro-style games, long before I learned that they’re considered retro. I’m not sure what makes them so fun but they completely dominate my gaming nowadays.
Naturally, I became curious about the games that had inspired my favorite titles. I tried many of them, and eventually came to a conclusion: most of the time, retro games are nothing but a historical curiosity.
Ultima 4 has fairly unique concept but falls flat with its roleplaying feeling forced, its bland gameplay and its setting with no originality whatsoever.
Compare this to Moonring. Gameplay rivals many modern roguelikes (the classic definition, so Brogue, not Isaac), great setting that sucks you in immediately, and so so many mysteries.
Ambermoon pretends to be an open world RPG but is actually a linear RPG-lite with combat feeling more like a puzzle (and a wrong solution punishes you by 15 mins of you and your opponents missing each other every turn).
That’s not to say that retro games aren’t important - the modern indies are standing on the shoulders of giants. Yet I can’t say that retro games worth the trouble of getting into them, compared to the polished modern indie titles.
While Chrono Trigger and FFVI are among my all time favourites, they’re kind of like an prog rock superbands. They’re a pinnacle of the era, impossible to top in their own categories. But if you know where to look there are probably some guys doing stuff as impressive, if not more, out of their garages. Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes come to mind.
I’ve tried those.
Sea of Stars looks as pretty as Chrono Trigger, but its writing is noticeably worse and it completely fails at one of Chrono Trigger’s great strengths, pacing. In Sea of Stars’ defense, it is generally better than Chrono Trigger at interesting dungeon design and its battle system has more potential. But those don’t compensate enough for poor writing and especially pacing.
Chained Echoes tries really hard to fit a 32-bit plot into a 16-bit running time, and it doesn’t quite work. Still, it left me interested in more by the same dev team, especially if trends and tech change so that they can switch to doing a game explicitly inspired by Xenogears and its ilk.
Yea. The JRPG genre has a lot of amazing modern titles. It is just that the genre fell out of popularity for a while and the newer titles never got the major marketing that Chrono Trigger and FF received.
Though, good news, the genre does seem to be heading towards a revival.