LogFAQs > #901949140

1. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky First Chapter
Original Release: 2011 (2004 jp)
Year Played: 2011, 2014 on Steam
Developer: Falcom
Platform: PSP/PC
Favorite City: All of them

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I'm going to get sentimental here. FC is #1 after all, and it would be right to give it a proper, lengthy write-up explaining the reason why.

Let's backtrack. The year is 1996. I'm an avid player of Super NES video games, mostly platformers like Mario or Donkey Kong Country. I don't know what the term "RPG" even means but I keep seeing it mentioned in the Nintendo Power mags I had my dad buy from the local EB. So naturally, being a big fan of Mario, I start reading about something called "Super Mario RPG" and becoming interested in it, though not really sure what it would actually be. It certainly looked odd from the screenshots, with the isometric view and all. I figured it would play that well and Mario would jump on Goombas from that perspective and it'd be pretty much like any other Mario. So we went to the local Blockbuster and I decided to play it. Initially, I was entirely confused as to what the hell I was doing...why am I going into a separate screen to input commands? Why can't Mario just jump on this Goomba or Koopa? I don't get it. Shortly after these realizations, I had my ass handed to me by the Hammer Bros. boss. But, having nothing else to play, I continued to fight around the first area and thought, "Well, they are dropping coins so that's good, and this Exp Points thing is good." Pretty soon I managed to get past the first boss only to get my ass handed to me by the second. Also, I think I was 8 or 9 at the time so reading wasn't a strong suit of mine. But hell, I was into this game. I loved the fact that my characters could get stronger any time I want by actually spending time with them and then being able to defeat the next boss and move on to the next cool area.

But the thing about it is that SMRPG managed to give Mario a personality, despite being a mute. Before this, I thought of Mario as nothing more than a sprite or pixel on screen. Here, despite being mute, he actually has character. So does Geno, so does Mallow, so does freaking Bowser and that was awesome. I also loved that there was a plot. I had never played any game prior to this that had an actual storyline. The most plot of any game I played was, "Princess is in another castle" or "Bananas got stolen." Here, we start off with a new enemy taking over Bowser's Castle. Simple enough, but there's a whole world to explore and Star Pieces to get. Along the way, lots of things happen. And I loved it. I wanted to experience it all.

That is the story of how I got into RPGs.

From that point on up till the last inch of the SNES life cycle, I rented and experienced various different RPGs that I never paid attention to before SMRPG got me into them. Breath of Fire 2 was the second one I played, and the more grown up plot and more "mature" (or should I say edgy) feel had me hooked. I'll admit I don't remember the third RPG I played, I think it was either FFVI (FF3 back then) or Chrono Trigger...or Lufia 2 or Secret of Evermore. I played the majority of RPGs on SNES and loved them all. But I didn't get to play much else after that as I owned the Nintendo 64, a system that had like zero RPGs. I knew nothing of the PSX up until a friend asked me to come over one day to play his older brother's Final Fantasy VII. The only thing I knew about FFVII was a few commercials which showed nothing but cutscenes and no actual gameplay. I didn't think FFVII was even RPG anymore, it looked vastly different from 2/4 or 3/6. But that time I spent watching my friend play it made me want to come back and watch it more. The story was phenomenal, I couldn't stop thinking about it. This game was something else.