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Friday, January 17, 2014

Tales of Xillia: What Every JRPG Needs

Sony's cheesy limited time 14 for '14 digital game sales promotion for the PlayStation platforms that is currently happening is not all that exciting when it comes to the available selections but at least I was able to actually take advantage of it: I picked up Tales of Xillia by Namco Bandai Games for the PlayStation 3 and Killzone: Mercenary by Guerilla Cambridge for the PlayStation Vita. I haven't checked out Mercenary yet but I have played Xillia for several hours and I just want to point out that the game introduced a really cool non-playable character conversation system that I strongly believe should be implemented in all future Japanese role playing games:

You can only talk to NPCs with a speech bubble indicator.

After you have gone through that particular conversation...

...the speech bubble is grayed out.

I can be excessively thorough while playing a JRPG and I would not leave a town until I have talked to everyone whom could talk to. Also, for the first hour or so, I would also ensure that I would talk to the same NPCs more than once to deduct whether or not the game offers multiple conversations per NPC. With the NPC converstaion system found in Xillia, I feel more relaxed when roaming about NPC-filled areas because I know that I don't have to worry about missing anyone and that I could freely explore these locations instead of being systematic about the approach to ensure that I will get to every single NPC. I really would love to see this implemented in all future JRPGs. It may not seem like a big deal but it certainly make harassing NPCs a lot more fun for someone like me.

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