Well, I alluded to my utter inexperience with World of Warcraft (and actually all Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games altogether) yesterday.
That’s not my only omission, another significant chunk of games that has gone almost entirely unplayed are Japanese role-playing games.
I tried out Final Fantasy VII back in the original playstation days, but found it not too interesting. The story was a total railroad, the random battles far too frequent and time-consuming and all in all the game just rubbed me the wrong way. Any semblance of actually playing a “role” and making meaningful choices was very limited, and the proceedings seemed to be nothing more than visually exquisite number-cruncher’s dream. With bucketfuls of teen angst piled on.
However, despite my misgivings, I’m still interested in the genre, and the recent Lost Odyssey seems to be a possible entrypoint. After all, a game that uses a similar entrypoint to the almighty Planescape: Torment can’t be all bad.
On the other hand, my backlog so does not need yet another long game, and reading the Gamasutra article on the top 20 japanese RPGs is a far easier way to get better acquainted with the history.