People said that old RPGs such as FF7 etc is better than nowadays' RPG..
For example, I once read in a local game magazine that Grandia i is a real mess and the quality is far beyond the first. and some of my friends don't like the modern concept for FF..
But what do you guys think?? Which one is better?? The classic or the new one?

I usually like the classics. Just because they were usually the first to introduce me to a whole new concept and innovated gameplay. I would consider a classic game to be the first to introduce a whole new form of gameplay. They don't even have to be from the SNES era, there are some later generation games that I would consider a classic.

Good lord. FF7 is not an old RPG.

That said, I think they're about the same; the genre is holding on to the technical limitations that were put in place when the genre was founded back on CPU's with single-digit MHz speeds. The graphics, sound, and presentations have improved, but seriously. Do we need to represent everything with onscreen numbers? Do shops at subsequent towns have to sell better weapons? Do monsters have to ironically get stronger over the path you're destined to take in the game? We have the processing power to move away from the arbitrary numbering systems that RPG's revolve around, but people who think Playstation games are "oldschool" have been extremely unreceptive to the games that try to evolve.

This relates to my argument about FFXII - the game, in my opinion, is a big step in the right direction. Whether young gamers will acknowledge that is anyone's guess.

I would prefer newer RPGs, but this isn't because of graphics or storyline or the processing power argument, but because there are several features of older RPGs that simply turn me off when they show up in newer RPGs. I don't mind throwbacks to classic games, but I think there are some things that simply have to be gotten rid of or changed. So these features are my arguments for newer RPGS against older RPGs, or at least more refined RPGs versus RPGs that simply use features that are old holdovers from previous games:

1) Level grinding. Playing Final Fantasy 1 for the NES is a chore compared to newer RPGs. I don't want to spend hours on end grinding away battling monsters so I can get through the next dungeon. That time can be spent advancing the story, developing the characters, or, heaven forbid, actually role playing. If I want to power level my characters, I'd like that choice, but I don't like being forced to spend a few hours fighting so that I can just barely survive the next dungeon.

2) Random battles. Like the level grinding rant above, I would also like the choice to not have to fight if I can avoid it. My preference is in being able to choose battles, but I don't dislike random battles. What I dislike is having to fight every few seconds because the encounter rate for an RPG is so high. A lot of older RPGs have experimented with this. Ys for the NES didn't have random battles, and neither did Earthbound for the SNES. You could see your enemies, and often avoid them altogether.

3) The fighting engine. Granted, a high encounter rate isn't so bad when the fighting engine is fun. Tales of Phantasia for the SNES pulled it off because its fighting engine was so different from anything else out there. But a good fighting engine makes an RPG a much more engaging experience, more so than the simple "pick an action and go" style that used to be common. The Final Fantasies after IV had ATB mixed in with status effects. Earthbound, although it had a very basic fighting engine, let you automatically win battles where you overpowered the enemy. Bioware's RPGs such as Baldur's Gate and the more recent Knights of the Old Republic was a mix of real-time and turn-based fighting. Chrono Trigger made you think about your position compared to your opponents positions to pull of special attacks. Grandia II pushed this even further by letting the enemy move, letting them avoid some of your attacks. It's more fun and engaging the less basic an RPG's fighting engine is, because of the increased depth of strategy.

4) Console save system. A lot of RPGs are doing away with this, and the more the better. Although it's nice to know that the boss is right behind that door, I like having the ability to save anywhere I want. Life happens, and it's a pain to travel long distances to get to the last save point when life does happen. Please, people who make RPGs, let us save wherever we want.

5) Voice acting, although it really only applies to RPGs released in the last couple years. Voice acting is good, but if a publisher knows that their audience wouldn't mind having their voices in the original Japanese with the combination of knowing that the recently recorded English dub is horrible, it would probably be a good idea to ship that game with the original voice track in place. If not, at least allow the option to control voice volume or to turn it off completely, because some games, even if they feature voice acting, play better as text.

And that's it, my argument for newer RPGS versus older RPGs. It's not that I like the new ones better, it's that a lot of features have been changed or improved for the better that make the game as a whole a much nicer product.

Mostly, I'd say I agree with Pomorales. The pro for RPG games made these days is that they present or make use of more contemporary features and concepts. But old-school RPGs, even if they retain ancient gameplay concepts, usually manage to retain a sense of timelessness for their fans; Chrono Trigger, Lufia, Final Fantasy (NES and SNES games).. I imagine I'll be playing 'em long after game consoles have basically become mock-ups of The Matrix. =P

So basically what you're saying is you're happy with linearly incremental improvements to the constituents of an RPG's presentation based on the hardware platform, as long as the gameplay strikes a balance between certain aspects that have been at the foundation of the genre since its inception?

See, that's exactly what bothers me about the genre. Look at how other genres have grown - shooters, platformers, simulations (though, this one relies heavily on performance specifications)... These games have all completely overhauled their formulas again and again. Console style RPG's however, still use all of the basic elements that the first ones (such as Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Megami Tensei) did, and the reason these games had to use these basic number systems is because the hardware was not powerful enough to represent lifelike figures. At best, there was a formula to calculate your character's power (modified by equipment and level), and how much damage you would do to an enemy based on their defense characteristic. If you did enough damage to kill that enemy, it would trigger a switch saying the enemy was dead, and you'd move on. See, we have the processing power nowadays where the video game can become a platform to inject you into a place where you are the master of your domain, but all too often, you're just left watching events happen that you were expecting hours before coming up in the story. You play a game like Grandia 3, you're basically watching four people constantly moving from point A to point B. You play a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, and characters you once thought were your friends have their own agendas - and I'd like to see an expansion of that take place in the genre.

Moving beyond that argument, rarely does an RPG come along with a story I'd call intriguing. I mean, I've heard the "If you're just looking for a story, read a book" argument, and I can understand that - an RPG is a blend of story and gameplay, however all too often they're "let's get a bunch of stupid, clichéd characters together and go save the world" affairs. I mean, seriously. If someone did achieve perfect balance of all the things you're looking for, what's left? The genre has just been recycling the same ideas, and I, quite frankly, am sick of it. When I was a kid, I used to love RPG's more than any other genre. Now I barely go out of my way to play them.

I'd argue that we still don't have enough processing power to create a working, virtual world, if that's what Orchid's suggesting. Sims 2 at best can run about twenty characters in a single instance with all their AI routines running through the processor. Oblivion tried this too with a less complex AI model, but the end result, although admirable, still ended up being artificial, and that made those characters walking around town a little forgettable, even if they were off doing their own things.

I'd like to see something like this happen too, but for the near future the best developers can do is create more and more nuanced scripted events. There is no way they can get a writer's mind into AI routines so that the story of a game can change on the fly based on the player's actions. The processing power simply doesn't exist for something like that yet. For that, tabletop RPGs still exist, and so do a few PC RPGs like the old Vampire the Masquerade and Neverwinter Nights, where you can get a person behind the storyline to react to the player's actions during multiplayer sessions.

In defense of the cliched stories though: they sell. I don't like the fact that there isn't more variety out there, but the fact of the matter is that the classic "save the world" storyline still works. It's like an entertaining popcorn movie. Sure, they won't receive too much critical praise, but they can be fun to watch again and again, if only to hear the story again. I would love to play an RPG where I refused to save the world and had to deal with the consequences, or if I "accidentally" killed a plot character and found out that there was a storyline created for that possibility as well. All I can hope for though is that developers start giving players a lot more choices story-wise, and flesh out enough material to cover all the possible choices they might make.

You say that as if the stories aren't written prior designing the scenarios in the game. I'm not saying the characters themselves will automatically adapt to what you're doing; the writers would take care of that. My argument is that the writers focus too much on what's going on with your character and your travelling companions, and how to take them from their origin to their objectve. They're not stopping to say "Hey, if this is happening in this part of the story, how would these other people be reacting?" The easiest scenario to picture is a war style game, where different nations are taking different steps to gain leverage in the battle. Suikoden II, for example, has things going on outside the main story that keep it interesting. The kind of depth a good story can provide only comes through when arcs can move in different directions yet still have an impact on the others.

As for playing a game where you don't save the world, Breath of Fire IV's "bad" ending (which I thought was cool as hell, if a bit underdeveloped) is the only one that springs to mind.

I agree with you on that part about the focus of the story. It's weird going back to a town earlier in a game and, lo and behold, nothing's changed! A few months in the game have passed by and nope, nothing new. It's just there now as a cheap place to rest, and the people living in it really don't matter anymore, which is kinda a shame.

It's a lot of writing though to cover loads of short interacting story arcs that might have different "endings" and how they react with each other and how they react with the overarching storyline. I think it's worth it, but it's a LOT of writing.

Yes, it's worth it... but gamers (for the most part) don't demand it because they're happy with the stagnation of the genre. Nations shouldn't just cease having any impact whatsoever on the story because you've passed them, villains shouldn't just wait at the top of towers for you to come and kill them, and you shouldn't have to be restricted to always choosing the just side of a battle. You don't have to have experience points, or weapons shops in every town, or random monsters that get stronger as you go on. Design can overcome these things, but nobody cares enough to do it - why should they put in the (enormous amount of) work to differentiate themselves when people will invariably buy everything that flies onto the shelves as long as the aspects that you mentioned earlier are balanced enough and the game at least looks interesting from the outside?

I like the old RPG more. Storyline is more exciting or better than the new one. Like Final Fantasy. The old story line is much more better than the storyline from now.

As a lover of RPG's I prefer both I'm thrilled with the prospects of what the PS3 and 360 can do for the realm of RPG's.... but i love going back and playing the old school RPG's because they are the roots of what the genre is founded on today and we always have to remember that and if you stray to far is it really a Role Playing Game then.

I'm a total addict to older games, though I disagree with the random battles part. Some games such as Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Zelda: A link to the past (that's the only zelda game I've played) and many more do not have random battles, as a matter of fact, the last two that I named are SNES games with real-time battle.

This is where people begin to understand that I consider old games to be SNES and further back since Playstation was already pushing the revolution to better games. Sure, I like newer games, got nothing against them, its just that I easily grow attached to the ones I grew up to that stay close to my heart. Don't get me wrong, I have many present-day games that are my favorites too, I just wanted to prove Pomorales wrong about the random battle thing.

But, if I were to choose one or the other then I couldn't; if a game has good plot-line, battle system, and creativity then I'm all over it. ;P

Yeah...I gotta agree. You can't consider FF7 old when there were RPGs that have been out 8 years before.

As for the topic, honestly, I've enjoyed FF6, Chrono Trigger, Lufia 2, and Seiken Densetsu 3 a whole lot more than most RPGs that are coming out today.

For me, there is really nothing "classic" or "new". The only thing I consider that changes dramatically are graphics and cutscenes. It just depends on the style of the creator, many new RPGs still retain many aspects of old ones like a turn-based battle system.