One thing I love is video games, a fondness that goes back to seeing a table arcade in a crowded late 80s Pizza Hut and the Commodore 64 we got around that time.
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In the years leading up to now, they have been a fairly constant companion. Some of them I've loved, most of them I've gotten along with, and a few of them I have absolutely loathed. But it's far easier to remember some of the ones I prefer.
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I consider it a challenge, in a way. Save for Leslie and a few others, I haven't met anyone offline that has the same or similar preferences for games. And even my preferences sometimes go away from what many people would consider great gaming. But I have reasons for liking them. If I can convey my appreciation of a few of those games to you adequately, not all is lost. And if you get curious enough to look the games up yourself, well... then I've bowled a clean game.
Legend of Mana (Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana in Japan)
System: Playstation
Release Date: 2000
Grade I Played the Game First In: 9th
In this game, you start out as the nondescript hero. Unlike most RPGs from Japan, you can customize your character, choosing both your gender (male/female) and what weapon you specialize in (ranging from swords and axes to bows and staves). Then you could eventually choose a pet, develop musical instruments to cast spells, build golems, grow your own garden... but those aren't central to anything. Primarily, this is an action RPG, meaning that when you go into an area, you move around the screen at once, pressing buttons to slash your enemies, cast spells, and dodge their attacks. There is a good deal of strategy involved in this, and also a lot of good old fashioned button pressing, but it isn't terribly difficult to learn how to do. The battles are fun, but I don't love it for the battles.
No. I like it for the artwork, first. Just look at that screenshot. It is terribly pixelated and not that high-quality (the screenshot, that is), but the original was quite a sight. It had bright, vibrant colors, but it wasn't a canned cartoony feel. The characters, human or otherwise, were well-proportioned, the environments were always impeccably done. It was like leafing through a storybook. One with talking trees and bunny-looking things that tried attacking you, and onion warriors that would become your best friend.
Second, the music. At its worst it was mediocre, uninspiring, but not cringeworthy. At its best, it was aural bliss. There were several tracks that set the mood perfectly, like one where you enter a ruined city of marble and gemstones... more gemstones than marble, even, but the place is abandoned. With it plays this quiet accompaniment, in piano and some wind instrument I can't identify, drawn out in its ponderous beats, dwelling on all the right notes, sounding like teardrops falling onto the strings... which is relevant to the plot, by the way. (You can go to here and read a review of the soundtrack: http://www.rpgfan.com/soundtracks/lomost/index.html)
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Then there was the way the story worked, which is also how the world was laid out. In most RPGs, especially earlier ones, you have a world map where you go from place to place, and then an area where you explore, talk to people, or fight... a place where the plot unfolds. With Legend of Mana, it took the concept a step further. Each place on the map represented a distinct place, which is normal... but it also represented part of a story. There were 63 or so different stories in all, some simply part of its own place, others connected to other stories and places in grand story arcs that would eventually connect in the revival of the Mana Tree and the endgame, which is yet another story. To make things simple, you start out with one place, and then place a second and a third on the map when you have completed a story... and the story possibilities start multiplying from there.
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But it wasn't a game that had its prefabricated, "We're going to save the world, and we're going to do it all game!" (These can turn out really well.) Nor was it a game that said, "We're going to save the world for most of the game, then we'll let you do side quests and such for a while until you get tired of the game and never finish it." (I don't know how these turn out... I never finish.) The joy was in the main plots... but no plot being too centrally focused, it was easy to like and enjoy several at once. Like, again, reading a story book, with fun action to keep the story going. And if it ever did get tedious, like trying to learn to talk Dudbear, you could always go to some other place.
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This last one is what got most of the reviewers (the story, that is). They could readily admit it was a pretty game, and even a fun game, but they couldn't get over the lack of a central, core story. There were core stories, but finishing them didn't mean the end of the game, even if it meant you had saved the Jumi, saved the world, whatever. And then finally, at the opportune time, you did one more story, one that was representative of all your previous progress, even if it wasn't the same villain.
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Ah. There it is. The final reason. The characters. Which should have been implicit if I liked the story and the character artwork, but... the characters were well-developed. They weren't fully good or evil. People who you might consider villains turn out to be not so simple, and people that you might consider good guys might, say, desecrate a temple in pursuit for a profit? Friends might not treat friends that well, but they'd make up in the end. And, as I said earlier, if you would ever want to avoid a character, you could... so long as you liked a lot of them, you could avoid a story arc or two nearly altogether and still finish the game. If that's important.
The joy of the game is in the journey.
(All images are from www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Mana, save the title screen, which has been bumbling around . More importantly, they were made by Square, then Squaresoft, then Square-Enix. Using them for any profit would be uncool. Yo.)
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