What sort of conclusion is there to be drawn when you have already labeled the older games as slow, clunky with painful mechanics and newer games as refined? :-P

I've seen many people say (about games in general) that older games often have more depth in contrast of newer more "casualized" games that cater to the lowest common denominator as often as people say what you wrote. At the end is really about personal taste and if there is one objective thing that older games often do worse (apart from technical limitations, although with the popularity of retro-styled games nowadays often these limitations are seen through a stylistic prism) is their user interfaces. But even that divides people in how much they can endure it (and as Dwarf Fortress shows, a lot of people will endure the most obnoxious of UIs to get something they like).

As an example, there are many people who like grinding in JRPGs and some even consider it as a defining element of JRPGs (in that a JRPG is not real JRPG if it doesn't have grinding) whereas others are perplexed by the idea of anyone liking grinding and not seeing it as a cheap way to pad the game's length and something that developers should strive towards eliminating.

>As an example, there are many people who like grinding in JRPGs and some even consider it as a defining element of JRPGs (in that a JRPG is not real JRPG if it doesn't have grinding)

I am one such person who is happy to argue for the fact that ability to grind is one of the (maybe two?) defining traits of a JRPG. The option to meaningfully strengthen your player avatar that is not tied to story/game progression is the heart of JRPGs.

To add to this last comment, I would say that the entire point of early JRPGs was grinding. It was a simple formula:

Go to new area -> grind -> level up, buy gear -> defeat boss -> go to new area

Even in later 8-bit JRPGs such as Dragon Quest IV, that's pretty much all there was. Very minimal story/dialogue, rare puzzles ("get item A to proceed" type). Story was necessarily limited by the small ROM size.

I find that grinding has an almost calming, meditative quality that sets JRPGs apart from action-based games that require a lot of focus.

With recent JRPGs, the shift has been to lessen grinding and include a much larger emphasis on story and dialogue. The downside here for traditionalists is that more of the game is spent reading dialogue than fighting random battles.

Does any of this reflect bad game design? I doubt it. I would say that the gameplay of DQIV is highly polished for its time. But you must approach it knowing what it is (a game of turn-based random battles) and what it is not (a game of rich story and dialogue).

> > as opposed to current games, which had the experience from decades to get refined.

> in contrast of newer more "casualized" games that cater to the lowest common denominator as often as people say what you wrote.

If I had to summarize it, I'd say that the decades of refinement have led to them being streamlined at the expense of creativity.

I've given some thought to the grinding/no grinding issue and I think the true purpose of grinding is to allow systems learning of the game's economy and battle system. There is the more obvious reason of giving more weight (and a bigger dopamine hit) on every advancement, like when you save gold to buy a new weapon and suddenly start one-hitting enemies instead of needing 3 hits. But that also relies on learning, by feel, the underlying cost and value of each hit point as well as the tendencies and weaknesses from fighting the same enemies over and over.

Some people enjoy aggregating all of that information in their brain and getting mastery over it. Even mechanically dumb games can have interesting higher level tactics. People will make spreadsheets and argue over the best weapon or best combination of items or spells to fight certain bosses, even if the base game is mashing the A button to sword hit the enemy 5000 times in a row.

Some of them, not all. And of course it's just my opinion. You can rephrase it like this:

Slow, boring and clunky is actually good design that serves a purpose.

That resonates well with me. Unlike in my childhood, playing and replaying JRPGs in my late 20s felt like such a chore, and the often pastiche storytelling felt so distant, that I actually thought that I outgrew games in general up into my early 30s. In reality, it was just JRPGs that I outgrew, but me erroneously thinking that they would be "reference points" of good games led to wrong conclusions.

I got over it with newer games, and nowadays my Switch gets a lot of use.

Another thing that I realized, maybe related through my acceptance of not liking JRPGs very much anymore, was that I also actually just don't enjoy NES era games. I think I did at the time, but nowadays they are just too simple in structure, and too "arcade-y" in gameplay. Even allowing for the fact that I'm probably getting too old to be any good at that kind of "twitchy" games, I'm pretty sure that even if I was any good, the payout would still be disappointing. I think it's around the SNES-era that games get potentially interesting for me.

There are some exceptions like Link's Awakening on the Game Boy, but that always felt much more like an SNES-era game, and in fact it came out a year after SNES's A Link to the Past, and shares the almost same gameplay. I'm looking forward to the Switch remake coming out this year.

> I have that feeling every time I play an old JRPG. Many of them feel slow, clunky, with painful mechanics... as opposed to current games, which had the experience from decades to get refined.

It definitely depends a lot on what you're playing. Chrono Trigger has tighter, punchier pacing than practically any modern RPG. IIRC in the first couple hours you've visited two or three different areas, seen consequences of your choices, escaped a dungeon, had a cinematic fight against a boss with unique mechanics, and discovered a secret about one of the main characters.

It's not perfect; there are a number of "uh, wait, what am I supposed to do now?" moments, but it still feels fresh otherwise.

Final Fantasy VI and Phantasy Star IV similarly have brisk pacing and great presentation. Early 3D RPGs slowed everything way down, for whatever reason.

I agree on all of the above points, and your excellent choices in classic JRPGs.

Specifically on slowing things down in 3D RPGs, Final Fantasy VII was pretty fun, even if a little grindy, up until the endgame. But by this point, effective grinding consisted of summon spells, which meant watching the same 90 seconds of an unskippable cut scene over and over again. Like, I get how mind-blowing 3D was in that era, but it killed the pacing so much for me that I never bothered to finish the game. I hear some cool stuff happens with Sephiroth, or whatever.