The state of affairs in RPGs today...

When I think back to the yester-years, I begin to miss how innovative and creative battle systems used to be. I mean, look at Final Fantasy 3(6 if your going by the Japanese title). It has the most creative bttle system I've ever seen in an RPG.



Every character's custom abilities were executed differently. For example; with Sabin, the muscle of your team, you had to pull off some Street Fighter type motions on your controller correctly, with Terra, You had to go through many battles without using her ability to let it charge, Celes, while her Rune ability was active, absorbs any spell casted at her, and Relm could sketch a drawing of the enemy and the drawing would use one random ability of the monster against it.

What's my point? Well, after Final Fantasy 7 was released, I began to realize it may be ages before I could see that same kind of creativity in RPGs again, as it has seemed the public traded in their demand for innovative, well-developed, and creative gameplay for flashy polygon graphics. While my hopes are high for Final Fantasy 13, my expectations are going to be low. Hopefully I will be surprised by Square Enix this time around... I'm not going to be holding my breath.