Old Fashioned

A trip to the doctor’s office today resulted in some further examinations required to figure out exactly what’s bugging The Wife.  In the meantime, in order to make herself feel a little better, we’ve turned to something sorely lacking in the current generation of consoles and made a surprisingly late purchase of what, for us, has always been a Must Have Game:

While I’m extremely happy with our Playstation 3, the one thing about this current generation of consoles I find truly worrying is that after 2 years of availability on the market, I am STILL buying one of my all time favorite genres of games–that being turn based Japanese role-playing games–for the Playstation 2 (it’s just a good thing my PS3 plays PS2 games.  Yay for backward compatibility) because aside from one truly horrible port from the 360, there are NO games in this genre available for the PS3.  It’s been a concern of mine for some time now because it seems like in an effort to appeal to “casual gamers” (defined as people that prefer more action oriented titles that require less thought and/or dedication to play or finish) turn-based JRPGs are being pushed to the side in favor of more action-y titles like Kingdom Hearts because publishers feel there’s a larger audience for that kind of game.  Turn-based JRPGs, it seems, are now considered a little too demanding of today’s audiences, and as a result, the newer consoles are shying away from them, whereas the Playstation 2, is in fine shape since its a console that’s famous for being a haven for the genre.

This kind of bugs me for two reasons.  One is that it IS my favorite genre of console gaming and I’ve been a devoted fan of these games for years, so obviously I’m sad to see them becoming more and more rare.  The other is that it’s one of the few genres of games that the Wife is unabashedly enthusiastic about–since, being turn-based and thus, more like chess–it doesn’t demand crazy reflexes honed through years of gaming just to enjoy the experience.