The Alliance Alive is a relatively new game, and those who have followed these articles know that its predecessor, The Legend of Legacy, has already been covered because of its unique elements. With a month of content dedicated to narrative elements, there is one particular aspect of The Alliance Alive that stands out in relation to many of its contemporaries- the overlapping narrative that takes place during the first quarter of the game. Although it certainly is not the first Japanese Role-playing game to implement the idea, the game revisits the concept at multiple points and benefits from the concept a great deal.

It comes as a great surprise to me that Square Enix has announced the far-off Final Fantasy VII remake will be released episodically. While any story-based game- and Role-playing games, especially- can have its narrative broken into smaller pieces, the pacing and amount of content per portion in Final Fantasy VII is questionable, and not necessarily clean-cut. Unless, I don't know, you break it up by the literal CD swaps from the original PS1 release. While many games have attempted episodic release schedules in the age of digital distribution, there are very few that seem justified in doing so. An episodic game needs to have a structure in which each installment tells a concise narrative, no matter how much cliff-hanging the writers wish to create in order to encourage a player to buy the next installment. What is stranger- to me, at least- is that there are specific franchises that feel primed to adopt an episodic release schedule yet have not done so.

Video games have evolved in ways previously thought impossible since their inception, largely thanks to the rapid growth and improvement found in iterative hardware and the importance of such devices in the digital era. What was once a rudimentary open-world game like The Legend of Zelda pales in comparison with Breath of the Wild, both games offering freedom and exploration in vastly different ways. Because of the rapidly-changing standards, however, titles that were once considered the highest quality of their era are constantly challenged by newer efforts. What was once hailed as revolutionary is now considered a relic, usually only in terms of aesthetic, nothing more. So when developers claim that they are attempting to evoke a "classic" feeling, what are we to expect from their product? It isn't necessarily the same as what is "retro," which, depending one your tendencies, is anything produced within the previous fifteen to twenty years. As men...

I have no particular love for Final Fantasy, a statement that would strip my status as an RPG fanatic in the eyes of some. I had very little exposure to the series in my youth, however, and my first Final Fantasy would actually be a spinoff, the first entry in the Crystal Chronicles series. The action-based, cooperation-focused role-playing systems were extremely appealing to me, and its unique races and more straightforward lore were easy to grasp, serving its rustic sensibilities nicely. I would go on to play each title in the Crystal Chronicles series, witnessing the refinements of its cooperative structure and eventual regression into something utterly weird, before vanishing off the map completely. In its place, I would find another coop ARPG to fill the void: a little series known as Monster Hunter. Its focus on precision movement, intense preparation, and dedication to equipment and weapon builds would enthrall me in a different way than Crystal Chronicles, which featured dung...

If it ain't broke, should you refrain from fixing it? Although a slight rephrasing from the original statement, this question is one we have all probably faced in some shape or form. The idea of rephrasing, or perhaps refreshing, old ideas for a new circumstance is likely another situation we have found ourselves in. Whether you like it or not, this is often the state of combat and game design in role-playing games, where we can see numerous iterative versions of a rather traditional formula. It's a bit surprising that game designer, producer, and scenario writer Hironobu Sakaguchi, one of the creative minds behind the beloved Final Fantasy series, found himself asking the same question after releasing Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. “I have an RPG formula from the 25 years experience I have in the industry,” He told the media, “which is a turn-based, orthodox one.” So if the tried-and-true isn't cutting it, where do you go next?

Welcome to another installment in a continued discussion of RPG terminology. Today, we'll take a look at the design of another core element of the genre- the Overworld. There is a specific definition that stems from a user-generated source which I would like to immediately identify- found here , of all places. To reiterate much of this definition, an Overworld is meant to interconnect specific locations and primarily function as a means for travel. But there are many questions the idea of an Overworld presents, and many concepts of game design that must be addressed. In discussing the subject, we might actually end up coining some new terminology. While many of the terms and concepts in these articles may be applied to WRPGs as well, our discussion will mainly focus and reference JRPGs. Let's review our ever-growing glossary of terms: Organic grinding-  the experience (EXP) the game developers force you to accrue because of thoughtful game design. Artificial grin...