Max Krieger (whom I’ve featured here before actually) posted this on Bluesky last night:
the wildest part is that the “are turn based rpgs dead?” debate has been settled for 10+ years. we have had multiple megahits in the genre, some of which have dictated the cultural buzz for months.
time just never moves for these people, this flavor of gamer is a revenant stuck forever in 2013.
It was in response to another Bluesky post from @headsfalloff.com calling out a YouTuber for a reductive comment about how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is “how Final Fantasy SHOULD BE”.
Regarding Max’s quote post, I literally said the same thing to myself yesterday afternoon and I think it speaks to a wider media issue where people think “not quite as popular as the other thing anymore = dead”. It’s so boring! Now, I’m very biased when it comes to turn-based RPGs because they’re are my thing and I’ve spent the last 4 months playing 5 of the first 6 Final Fantasy games (and 25+ years playing Pokémon). But honestly if you don’t like what you see now, go check out thousands of games from the past 4 decades or whatever (I even wrote about that a few days ago). It’s never been cheaper or easier.
And these games have range; difficulty levels go from easy to furiously hard, storylines are either non-existent or engrossing and stick with you forever. There are whimsical games, weird games, polished games, god awful games with charm. And you don’t HAVE to play through 100+ hour to get to the end like a lot of modern games. The fact that so many developers force that on you now is ridiculous. Who has the time?
But I’m digressing. Turn-based is not an archaic RPG format and I’m tired of hearing people pretend it’s dead and that it’s having a revival. As @headsfalloff.com said in their earlier thread, good indie RPGs come out multiple times a year giving dark deity 2 as an example of one that came out less than a month ago and everyone who played it adored it.
They were right in saying I (collectively) hadn’t heard of it and after a quick look, I’m intrigued. I love me a tactical RPG (and it’s not like Fire Emblem is dead—Engage came out in 2023!)
So please, stop this unnecessary discourse—or any others for that matter—and just play your games.
