RPG Fever

To paraphrase one of the best SNL skits of all time… I have a fever. And the only cure… is more turn-based RPGs.

It’s my latest video game fixation. Last year I got really into Coromon, which is like Pokemon, except the creators actually tried. In the fall, I put 40 hours into Sea of Stars, and I still left wanting more. When I ran out of challenges in that game, I tried Chained Echoes. 50 hours later, I’ve installed Star Ocean R Second Story. Super Mario RPG is already in my queue, as are Cassette Beasts and Golden Sun, a Gameboy Advance RPG that I bought when I was eleven and never finished.

It’s pretty rare for me to stick with one genre of anything for so long, but I have a theory for why I’m so stuck on huge, gradually-explore-the-map-while-getting-incrementally-stronger-until-you-save-the-world games. And it might have something to do with my other fixation of the last two years: constantly refreshing the news.

As it turns out, our world is not in great shape. And for whatever reason, not a single plucky teenager or warrior with a tragic past has quested hard enough to save it. I mean, I don’t think anyone’s even made a dent lately.

So, yeah. I am absolutely thrilled to dive into worlds where no matter how humble the origin, heroes have a pathway to actually addressing the most pressing issues around through a mix of teamwork, strategy, and finding progressively cooler swords.

A psychologist would also probably tell me that I’m falling back on a form of childhood escapism because the pressure to be a real adult in a world that makes me feel helpless to effect change weighs down on me like the sky on Atlas, but I wouldn’t even be able to hear them over these absolutely killer video game soundtracks, so we can probably just ignore that.

Anyway… I’m accepting any and all RPG recommendations for my backlog, but ideally nothing as scary as whatever the New York Times has on its homepage today.