PixlBit

At long last, summer session has finally come to an end at the university where I teach, and pretty soon I'll have more time to devote to my most beloved of hobbies... and, of course, to write music and do other productive things. Yes.

Anyway, around this time every summer, I usually pick an RPG to lose myself in for a few weeks... or maybe two, depending on what my schedule looks like. In the past, I've gone through Etrian Odyssey, Dragon Quest VII, VIII, and IX, and... probably some other things. I honestly can't remember what I played through the summer of 2011, although that might have been more of an NES year.

The point is, I'm doing it this year, and I've got quite a number of games to choose from. I could polish off Final Fantasy V, jump back into my runs of Wizardry or Ultima II, attempt to slog through a bit more Demon's Souls (my opinions were getting mixed about halfway through my run), or start any number of B-list titles that have been kicking around on my shelf, like Eternal Sonata or Unlimited Saga. I think I'm going to go with one of my newer purchases, though...

I've heard Ni No Kuni get some flak from certain people on the internet despite a good deal of critical acclaim surrounding the game. It's hard to say how I'll feel about it; on the one hand, I respect the opinions of the likes of Bob Mackey and Christian Nutt, but on the other hand, the game seems to be, by all appearances, pretty solid. And therein lies the problem: the game *looks* solid, but garners opinions from both ends of the spectrum in regards to story and gameplay. When I look at screens of the game, my first thought is to think back to Dragon Quest VIII, my favorite installment in the series and one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Superficially, both games share some common ground: both are developed by Level-5, are visually stunning and capture the anime aesthetic well, and employ monster-capturing and an alchemy system among their gameplay mechanics. Both games have also had their share of fans and detractors, with complaints of "too much grinding" sprinkled throughout many of the less positive reviews.

Over the past few years, I've begun to realize that my tastes as a gamer are kind of bizarre at times. I've forced myself to tolerate any number of bad NES games, and have found enjoyment from more of them than I might have expected. There are plenty of newer titles, however, that have ceased to grab my interest; I found Assassin's Creed to be utterly boring after about three hours, and Just Cause 2, as fantastic as it was at first, feels really, really busy-work-ey and has no meaningful penalty for dying - something that ticks me off about a lot of modern games. Bioshock lost its steam when I maxed out my funds well, well before the halfway point, Even Demon's Souls seems kind of lenient in that it only takes away your souls, and doesn't mess with your current stock of equipment when you die. Granted, I don't need everything I play to be Wizardry or Rogue, where one death can set you back a week (or more) of progress, but I feel that far too many new games are way too inclined to make endless concessions to avoid "frustrating" the player.

Also, what the heck is "grinding," really? People throw around that term way too often in RPGs, and I feel like it gets misused far too often. For my money, "grinding" is the process of running in circles and fighting easy enemies over and over again to level up. Grinding is not simply consciousness of the leveling process due to the lack of other distractions in an RPG. Grinding is not fighting lots of battles because of a high encounter rate; that's just a high encounter rate, which is its own problem. Grinding is not a lack of focus on story and a high emphasis on combat. Grinding is not a slow rate of leveling in and of itself (although this can make grinding tedious). I feel like people get frustrated with the fact that some RPGs require more than just pressing the attack button over and over, and say, "oh, grinding." Then again, I'm probably a bit of a snob in that regard, having forced myself to find all kinds of arcane solutions to getting through tough NES action games, so I find that turn-based RPGs, which, by comparison, feel much more lenient in that they allow you to take your time.

If you want to talk "grinding," go watch a few episodes of Chrontendo and recoil in horror at some of the Z-list RPGs on the Famicom released in the late 80's. Thank goodness we're more or less past that these days.

Anyway, that's the end of my sidebar rant. My hands hurt, so I'm done typing for now. I'd be curious to opinions, good and bad, on Ni No Kuni. Just be rational and use complete sentences in responding, please.