There have never really been all that many tactics RPGs released in the video game market.  For those of you unfamiliar with tactics RPGs, they are turn based roleplaying games played out on a grid where every character takes turns moving around and attacking, casting spells, healing, or what have you.  They are basically a combination of traditional RPGs and chess.  In fact, Blake Snortland reviews the greatest one ever made, Final Fantasy Tactics, on this site.  Read that here.

However, I have a problem with the tactics RPGs that have come out in the past few years. 

They suck.

It is sad that the last two good tactics games were released in 1998.  Both of them were for Playstation.  Yeah, that’s right, the first Playstation.  These were Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics.  These are the two that I love, the ones that got me hooked, and the ones that I still play around with today. 

But now you have like Disgaea and Makai Kingdom.  These games could have been made into fairly decent games.  But they have one flaw that makes them practically unplayable:  in order to get experience points, a unit has to deliver the killing blow to an enemy.

Some of you who do not play RPGs may not understand this concept.  Here’s the deal.  Characters that you fight with get stronger and learn new attacks, spells, etc when they get experience.  Because the enemies get progressively harder as you advance further into the game, you must get more and more experience points to make your characters strong enough to learn new attacks and spells in order to have a chance to defeat the more powerful enemies.  This is not anything new, nor is it a problem in most RPGs.  However, in these new tactics games, the only way to get experience is to be the one that finishes off an enemy.  To a point, this makes sense.

However, here’s where this theory takes a curve and makes the game unplayable.  There are two major flaws with this system.  First is that, because you only get experience for the killing blow, you don’t get that much experience overall.  You have to fight the same battles over and over and over and over again just to get a decent amount of experience points.  If you want to challenge the harder enemies, you have to fight that much more.  It is absolutely time consuming and boring. 

But I can understand this not bothering people.  Some see it as part of the game.  But the second flaw is the worst thing to happen to tactics RPGs ever.  Characters who do not focus on dealing damage, or who can’t deal very much damage, get practically NO EXPERIENCE.  For instance, in order for a character who primarily casts spells that heal other characters, that character must still deliver a killing blow to an enemy.  Never mind the fact that this character not only has probably a fifty percent chance to even land a blow on the enemy, but if they connect would do a grand total of ONE DAMAGE POINT.  Other characters, like those who cast spells that don’t do damage, or characters who enhance other characters, are also affected by this and it makes them WORTHLESS.  In order for these characters to get even a small amount of experience, you have to set up a precise plan of attack so that you wear down enemies until they are almost dead, then you have to get your non-attacker character into a position to not only deliver the killing blow, but to make sure they don’t accidentally get killed in the process, as these characters can’t take much damage in general.  And THAT IS TEDIOUS.

Am I saying that they should all have a system like Final Fantasy Tactics?  NO!  Final Fantasy Tactics may be the greatest tactics game ever, but it has flaws in its system too.  You can exploit that system to make the most powerful characters ever, and you can do it before you’ve even fought 3 battles.  That is stupid. 

There has to be a happy medium.  Why can’t there be a system where a character gets experience when they do stuff related to their abilities?  A healer gets experience when they heal someone, a wizard gets experience when he casts a spell, a knight gets experience when they attack an enemy.  Why not like that?  I don’t understand why not. 

So, I’d like to end by saying that you should wait until I announce that there is a good tactics RPG out there, and buy that one instead of buying any that come out.

Oh yeah, and fuck Prinnies.

StretPharmacist is a lot like the Undertaker:  A gimmick that should have never gotten over, but was taken to unbelievable heights.  Also, he is constantly injured.