Role Playing Games

I am not a big fan of the RPG genre. They can be fun, but usually the level grind gets to me and I do not have the patience to optimize my items. Now, I have got some friends who are huge RPG fans, so I know what they find fun about these games. They love the stories and characters and they find great joy in optimization. I just don't follow the line of reasoning behind optimization. As a result, I have never finished, or really gotten very far, in a Final Fantasy game. That isn't to say I have completely neglected the RPG library, I have just been selective.....OK, I only like somewhat odd RPGs. My personal favorite? Earthbound. 

Yeah Earthbound, the game Ness came from. Most people only know him from Smash Brothers. I also only knew him from Smash Brothers, but I decided to give his game a shot. Well, it was a very non-standard RPG I'll say that. First of all, the angle of the camera was pretty unique, for me the best factor for me was the lack of random encounters, a staple of most RPGs. The enemies had sprites so you could see them coming; you usually couldn't avoid them, but you could try and I liked that. It was a joy to play, so I figured I would try the other games in the series. For those who don't know. Earthbound is actually the sequel to a game called Mother. And it has a sequel called Mother 3. Both games were only released in Japan, where Earthbound was known as Mother 2. Mother 3 was spectacular in the same vein as Earthbound, with a better story. Mother is unfortunately more similar to traditional RPGs but it was still quirky and I forced myself to finish it. 

The only other RPG that I truly enjoyed was "The World Ends With You". It was ironically made by Square Enix, who I do not have a good relationship with, for the DS.

The game is played on both screens simultaneously. So the battles are really fast paced and fun. Story is good. Also, I didn't feel the need to optimize. The way the weapon system worked it was more conducive to variation of weapons rather than combining the best ones into a set. But mainly, it was the lack of random encounters. The way the system worked was that you didn't even have to fight outside of the story line if you didn't want to, though that would result in serious under leveling. So I think what would best benefit the RPG genre would be doing away with random encounters. These games are based around making choices, so let us chose when to fight.  

COG: Animal Crossing: Wild World. 

Making lots of money. Nuff said.