First of all, before I start my ranting, I would like to say that everyone is entitled to their opinions and that my opinions are no more superior than anyone else's. In this entry, I'm going to talk about my favorite video game genre, the RPG (role-playing game). I find RPGs better than most games because they are the most serious when it comes to developing a story and a believable world (including those with fantasy themes). They come in many varieties, my favorites being Pokemon and Final Fantasy VIII and X. It makes me angry though when people try to point out the flaws in the best of RPGs.

I just recently spent 20 hours playing Final Fantasy X at my friend's house on the weekend. Besides pausing for food and turning off the PS2 when I slept, that was 20 hours of playing non-stop. I have never been so drawn to a game ever since I played the two others I mentioned. The story was awesome, the characters were as real as I could imagine, and the fact that I received a "Game Over" three times (two bosses and a random battle gone wrong), proved that it wasn't a walk in the park. Someone I know though, disagrees with my appraisal of the game's difficulty.

I was talking to him about how much fun I was having with the game and how I had to use strategy to survive bosses and tough random battles. Arrogantly, he laughed and said that there is no strategy to RPGs, that battles are purely there as little side-actions to the story and that the "game" is simply an interactive movie. I agree that RPGs are heavily story-based, but I argued that there has to be strategy involved, since I reached "Game Over" by lack of planning. Again, he laughed and asked me why I just didn't fight random battles until I was of sufficient strength to easily beat whatever encounter I might have. Knowing that that was a perfectly legal way of playing a game, I simply answered, "Because that's not fun."

This is where I stress one of the reasons I like RPGs the most. I keep it separate though, since it is based off of my style of play, which I'm not sure how many would adhere to. I love RPGs because they have an awesome amount of strategy built into them; you just have to fight the urge to level up your characters and make the challenges disappear. I understand that there are those who find little difficulty enjoyable, but without a constant challenge, I cannot have fun.

When I played those 20 minutes, I never ran around the wild places to get more sphere levels to gain the upper hand. I always went right after the bosses, sometimes having to re-think my plan after a tough loss, especially when I noticed patterns in the enemies movements. Taking advantage of those patterns and weaknesses is exhilarating and fun. The same thing happened with Pokemon while I was doing a test play. I wanted to see if I could take down Brock starting with Charmander and only using the experience gained by the trainers and random battles that took place along the way. I won't go through the details, but all it took was planning and more than brute force to beat him, and the success was all the more rewarding.

To sum up what I'm trying to say, I believe that the game designers of RPGs are not just using simple game mechanics to fill up a completely story-based game. Strategy guides wouldn't exist if they weren't complex. They put a lot of thought into their work and I'm sure they are hoping that people don't take advantage of the unlimited experience available in some games. I proudly say that I avoid using that method and I hope that more people challenge themselves as I do to really notice the fun you can have. If you want to only follow the story, that's fine with me, but if you could make it better by challenging yourself, why not try it?