Ever since I was a child, RPGs were some of my favourite games. Well, mainly Pokemon, but still. And as I grew up, I played a lot of different ones, such as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and such, and liked them in different way and amounts. And one damn trend of the industry now a days is that turn-based RPGs are basicaly gone.

This, nobody can argue. Looking at the most popular RPGs here on GS, we see that they are almost all RPG shooters, such as Mass Effect and Borderlands; live-action RPGs, like Final Fantasy XIII; or MMORPGs, like DC Universe Online. These are the most popular kind now a days on home consoles, but why? What makes them so popular?

Games like Fallout 3 blend seeminglessly shooting and RPG mechanics; Fable gives you a lot of side options to the story; Mass Effect presents a solid story with solid shooting. My theory is that turn based RPGs were just becoming tiresome for most players, and the huge popularity of FPS made the RPG genre pass though a metamorphosis. Now, I don't mean to say that any of these games are bad. In fact, I love Fallout 3. But what I mea is that we recive the product of the opinion of the mass: if FPSs are the most popular genre, other ones have to sucumb to this too. And since action RPGs give more freedom with the battle system, putting shooting as the battle system was much easier. Thus, the new genre, the RPG shooters are born.

Some turn based ones blended shooting as the battle mechanic, such as Resonance of Fate, but it didn't recive the same amount of popularity.

Now we come to the other side: action and active time RPGs. The franchise that created the active time was Final Fantasy, with FFIV, and few games on the franchise post-IV used the classic turn based. Other gems, like Chrono Trigger, used the game system flawlessly, and I myself quite like it, but its main strenght can be its biggest flaw. It makes you pay attention to what is going on; you can't sit back and play the battles more laid back. Ones say that it makes the battles more interactive and fast paced; others, it makes them less enjoyable, since you are rushing so that the enemy dosen't kill you.

The bad part of them is that active time RPGs nowadays use a system where you yourself have to manualy more the character to the enemy to induce a battle and, consequentialy, you can only control one character. Final Fantasy XIII and White Knight Chronicles are guilt of that, and you feel like an idiot waiting for your metter to charge so you can attack again.

For last, action RPGs. When talking about them, I mean the ones that aren't shooters. Popular examples are Kingdom Hearts and Tales of Symphonia. Slashing you enemies in those games can be really fun, but the big problem is that they involve little strategy, since the rapid pressing of the same button normaly is enougth. Since I'm mostly familiar with Kingdom Hearts, I will adress a big issue with it, and that is that the games are too similar, with little additions to the combat.

Oh, and a quick coment of MMOs. Ones like WoW and DC Universe can be fun, specialy since you can play them forever basicaly, but they aren't specialy engadging, since most don't have a compeling story to maintain you playing.

I seems like it is taboo to make a simple turn based RPG is the modern days. They are mostly made for portables only, like Dragon Quest IX and the Pokemon series, and they are awesome. The best RPG series for me is the Shin Megami Tensei series, which compasses the two best RPGs I have ever played: Persona 3 and 4. They are turn based RPGs with incredibly addictive battle systems, where you can think on what is best to do, and make different monsters that have different abilities. They are of really high quality. Why can't something like them be made on a console of this generation?

This is my view on RPGs nowadays, and I would also like some suggestions on turn based RPG on the PS3, if you know any.