Two genre defining games were released within a year of each other, separated by a platform and the first letter of the genre descriptor.  One is famous for showing the world a whole new way of presenting visualization and sound in RPGs, the other for forcing a genre twist onto a conservative group of gamers while still keeping both feet rooted firmly in the past.  One is a prime example of a JRPG, and the other is a near textbook entry of a CRPG.  But we are all gamers, yes?  So please put down your tape measures and rulers, and join me for a gentle evening of Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy VII.



I guess it's no small secret that computer and console gamers have never really seen eye to eye on their choice of games.  Nowhere is this exemplified more than with the RPG genre.  Over the years, I've been privy to quite a bit of nastiness, with pretty much equal abuse from both sides.  I've heard a normally level-headed gamer tell me the game I was playing was nothing but a $60 slideshow, and a similar gamer tell me he doesn't play games with crappy art.  The Internet is also full of such things, as your favorite search engine will attest to this theory at any time of day.  However, on RFGeneration, we are a civilized lot, generally without trolls of any kind.  It seems that for the most part, that old axiom about keeping certain opinions to ourselves was well taught on this website.  It is in this spirit that I present this article, also with the hope that perhaps staunch opponents will at least be able to see what made the other so special.  On with the show.


Seeing as there are quite literally hundreds of games I could have chosen for this article, I feel obliged to inform it is no coincidence I chose the two I did.  This article was originally going to be focused on proving whether or not Baldur's Gate was the Final Fantasy VII of the PC world.  Spoiler alert, it was not, which was ultimately frustrating, but should have been apparent to me earlier.  I would like to extend thanks to some of the RFGeneration staff, who provided the "chuck on the shoulder" and suggestions that caused me to not throw away the research and ideas I had.

Anyway, the reason it didn't work came down to the impact both games had on their respective industries.  Final Fantasy VII's release in the West was something akin to a nuclear bomb going off.  Once upon a time, JRPG games were considered a valid genre, but were not very popular, and playing them was often considered a "nerdy" thing to do.  By the end of 1997, due to the massive media blitz by Square, a whole lot of people wanted to join us "nerds" in celebration of the awesomeness that is Final Fantasy VII.  If you can, I would ask of you to put yourself in the mindset of 1997, as an owner of a Sony PlayStation who played nothing but action games. However, you just happened to catch one of the following TV adverts one night.


What would you do?  Call up the local gamestore and ask questions?  Seek out a magazine and do some research?  Out here in Metro D, people just came up to their local gamestore and bought the game, in many cases without asking questions of any kind (or perhaps they asked if of the other six Final Fantasy were available).  The oddest thing?  Very few of this crowd complained about the game or attempted to return it.  Square had successfully managed to pull something of a "fast-one" on the gaming public at large. They ended up selling a greater amount of RPG games than any other publisher had managed to do in North America, and also brought up their user base by a large amount, pretty much guaranteeing sales above one million for the next game in the series.  Square had managed to, with some very clever marketing, some flash graphics and game design, bring the JRPG game to the mainstream and forever change the direction of JRPGs.

So what did Baldur's Gate do?  It certainly didn't bring the CRPG to the mainstream, that is for sure.  While the JRPG had existed pretty much in the closet for the first decade of its existence in the West, the CRPG was a primary genre pretty much since day one of the existence of personal computers and microcomputers (hereby know as computers), with that genre's nuclear bomb being Ultima.  While there were other games before it, Ultima could be credited with bringing the CRPG to the mainstream on computers.  Baldur's Gate...  Well, Baldur's Gate did something almost as good.  Two things to be more specific.  The first was to utilize the command and movement mechanic, seen in real-time strategy (RTS) games, while still retaining a feature to keep the traditional turn-based movement crowd happy (hitting the Space key paused the game).  This allowed for much quicker gameplay than games such as Fallout, while also letting players issue specific commands to any available party members while the game was paused. This feature added a level of depth that games such as Diablo didn't have.  The end result was a product that pleased both the demographic to whom slower, more plodding CRPGs appealed, as well as to those that enjoyed faster, more cerebral games.  Basically, Baldur's Gate united most of the CRPG masses.

The second impact that Baldur's Gate had was repairing the damage that had been done to the Dungeons & Dragons' license.  Why is this important?  Because the catalyst of the CRPG genre is the D&D system and world, going back as far as the beginning of the "Rogue-like" genre from dnd to Ultima, which was originally inspired by and conceived by the author Richard Garriot's D&D adventures with his friends.  The first licensed game on the computer, Pool of Radiance was a smash hit, despite it being a little light on content and requiring the player to read passages from the "Adventure Journal" for in-depth descriptions of certain parts of the game (supposedly due to the limit of space on the 5.25" media the original game shipped on).  The games improved, but over time the quality began to plummet with the release of Descent at Undermountain in 1996. This game was a bug-ridden, crap-fest that attempted (hamfistedly) to create a 3-D CRPG in the vein of Ultima Underworld, but with the Descent engine.  Yep, that 3-D 6DoF game that makes people sick to their stomach (sometimes) was nothing, if not a wonderful capstone to nearly four years of sub-par D&D games. This was until the license was redeemed one year later (1998) with the release of Baldur's Gate.  But this is the greatest strength of the license, how it manages to endure despite serious lulls in quality.  Much like many of the popular Nintendo franchises, D&D games have a serious cache with the fanbase, which allows them to endure far greater trials than the average license or franchise.


Opinion time......yay......well, some opinions and observations.  I've had the pleasure of playing both games and can honestly say that I love them both, but differently.  They are two very different games, but there is a bit of common ground to stand on for some comparisons.   

Final Fantasy VII's highs and lows are very well-documented, with many of these highs and lows following periods of the highs and lows of the Internet hive mind.  I always find this very amusing, especially when one can (with the magic memory of the Internet), actually catalog these trends.  Spending ten minutes researching this I find it very difficult to believe that one could find a person who earnestly states their like/dislike of Final Fantasy VII that has not also, in the near past (or future), did not (or will not) express the opposite feeling about the gameplay, the music, and/or graphics in the same sentence as the word, "nostalgic."  It's very strange and amusing indeed. I blame the gaming press, who cannot shut their mouths on what is cool or not for that podcast or blog post.......whatever.

The truth?  Final Fantasy VII has an enjoyable story and a wonderful soundtrack.  My opinion is that it has nostalgic graphics, though when I picture it in my head, it is always the slightly taller graphics of the PC version.  There seem to be split opinions regarding the usage of pre-rendered backgrounds to portray the landscape, but like I mentioned, split opinions are the name of the game when dealing with Final Fantasy VII on the Internet.  Personally, I thought they were quite nice looking, though I would often get lost when navigating the scenery.  They just look so nice, right?

A fun comparison between these two games is resting to regain hit points.  In Final Fantasy VII one needs only to find a suitable spot (be it field with tent, or an Inn) and rest.  It's that simple.  This is not the case with Baldur's Gate, which strictly adheres to the 2nd Edition D&D rules.  You can stay at an Inn, which does regain hit points (albeit at a slow rate).  However, things get hairy when out in the wild and there is always a chance that your sleep cycle will be interrupted by an ambush of some sort. At early levels, this will more than likely result in the death of a party member, which is not a good thing.  There are no phoenix downs, and death can mean permanent stat loss.  As a result, sometimes it's better to reload and try again.  You know, I think that this is my main complaint with any game that uses the more inflexible D&D rules of hit point regeneration.  Sure, you spend less time when you have at least one character capable of casting healing spells, but the time spent on R&R recovering from damage taken during a simple exploration of the woods can be annoying at lower levels.  Sure it is realistic, but soooo annoying.


It is a common practice of pundits to criticize JRPGs for their over-reliance on using teenage characters who eventually save the world.  I find it most amusing that this trope is observed in Baldur's Gate, where the main character is a young man (maybe not a teen or a man) who eventually becomes a main player in the world.  This is repeated not only in Baldur's Gate II, but within pretty much every other CRPG game that ever existed.  The only thing that really changes is the age, gender, and race of the main character.  I mean, who wants to just be Joe-Schmo, whose only adventure is defending his village from roving packs of wild animals and bandits.  Actually, that sounds like it might be fun and perhaps it's already a game.

The most celebrated split between the JRPG and CRPG is the direction of the story. The former is typically more interested in leading you through a story, while the latter tends to put your character directly into the story.  While readying for this months article, I found that both games (Final Fantasy VII and [/i]Baldur's Gate[/i]) are all about the linear path.  In both games, there are side-quests and other distractions to take you away from the evolving story line, but in the end, neither take you too far away from the main path.

While I had no problems booting up Final Fantasy VII and playing it enough to get nostalgic (which doesn't take very long), the same could not be said of Baldur's Gate.  I guess a lot of it comes down to history. I played Final Fantasy VII on launch day, while I waited years to do more than pop in the discs for Baldur's Gate, install the game, and then ignore it.  When I first played the latter, I was quite shocked initially at the resolution, which for the record is 640x480.  It's not pretty on a 1920x1200 screen, let me tell you.  But once I played only a small amount the story, it was more than enough to grab me.  Initially, I intended to pick up the Extended Edition, which has the higher resolution and better art, but in the end, I decided to keep it original.  After playing for a while, I didn't even remember my earlier discomfort with the graphics.  However, I think the graphics will remain the biggest barrier of entry for new players. 

When Final Fantasy VII gets remade, it will get all new character models and environments (enough to make people already question how much of the original game will be intact). On the other  hand, Baldur's Gate will be picked up gently, placed into some new clothes, and put back into the game...and maybe that is a good thing.  The more retrogaming I get into on the PC, the more I appreciate the original, often terrible and arcane graphics.  There is just something about them that is special.  Not everything needs to be remade, right?  Though I do hope the Final Fantasy VII remake gets a PC release. 

I did manage to find a great mod for Neverwinter Nights 2 which puts the first Baldur's Gate in it's entirety in the NN2 engine.  I personally haven't played it, but since you can change the camera in NN2 from a isometric view to over the character's shoulder, that amounts to a great deal of freedom to look around, though hopefully not in the Twin Snakes kind of way.  I might have to check that out some day soon. 


It's all about the love, right?  I doubt my rambling article will be able to turn some heads to the other side, but it was worth a shot.  Both games offer so much in terms of spirit that it would be a shame to let them go by the wayside.  Get whatever version you need to satisfy your aesthetics, be it the original versions modded for higher resolutions, the PC emulators customized for graphic fidelity, or simply getting the remakes and enjoying all the new hard work put into the games.  You can just "slum it", like I did and play the games the way the creators meant them to be played.  Whatever you need to do, I urge you to do it.  Both games are available in multiple versions (physical and digital), are reasonably priced loose (though can be a bit crazy CIB), and offer roughly the same amount of gameplay content.  Whether you are riding a planet from civilization to civilization for exploitation purposes or just making the short trek to Nashkel, the game prices are more excellent, so I highly recommend jumping in.

Thanks for reading!

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