There are probably many logical reasons for why JRPGs of the past were the way they were, at least technically. Still-image sprites, random encounters, copy-paste dungeon designs (especially in first-person dungeon crawlers); these were all, in one way or another, creative choices tied to many outdated development constraints rather than what I would call 100% intentional.
The games' speed and frames were also obvious limitations, hence why today’s modern JRPG ports—be they theFinal Fantasyremasters, theTrailsseries’s PS4 and Switch ports, or the upcomingStar Oceanport—are integrating time-saving options like turbo modes to speed up the battle sequences and animations. There are also other pseudo-turbo features like instant KOs, No Encounters, Triple EXP modifiers, and so on that are used sometimes (depending on the port) to get around many annoying aspects of our beloved classics.
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These features indeed make these old classics more accessible and less time-consuming, yet they all have the same side effect; making players spend less time on the games' redundant parts instead ofmeaningfully enhancingthem. It’s like you’re telling me to skip your own boring and uninspired game design by powering through it. And by adding such features to JRPGs, you are escaping the responsibility of crafting or reworking the gameplay loop to make it genuinely more compelling and engaging in the longer term.
What’s even more wild is that new games with classic systems likeSoul Hackers 2andDragon Quest 11, as well as the recentTrails Into Reverie, are incorporating turbo modes despite being modern games, and that is making the flaws of leaning on turbo modes even more apparent.
In Trails Into Reverie’s case, the trip involves so many repeated animations, near-identical dungeons (save for the Reverie Corridor), and a battle system that doesn’t evolve the more you engage with it. It isn’t likeXenogears, for example, which incorporates fighting game moves into the battles so that what you input is different the more you level up and unlock new combos. It’s also not like Shadow Hearts, where every single attack is executed differently using a variety ofroulette-like Judgement Rings. It’s your basic press-X-to-win turn-based game. The high-speed or turbo mode is merely masking the fact you wouldn’t be engaging with the game in any different way if you kept going, and is just asking you to skip the repetitive hassle instead of enticing you to spend more time with the game.
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That’s not the fault of Trails Into Reverie, but rather, a fault of the classic turn-based formula itself. And the turbo mode does go a long way to reducing or ‘ignoring’ the redundancy of that formula, but I wouldn’t say it’s a complete remedy. In light of other games in the genre though, it feels like an easy escape.
Persona 5redefined how the turn-based formula should feel all on its own, with its ingenious palaces and the social link component feeding into what you’re able to do inside these palaces, but it even went the extra mile with its Royal port and completely redesigned the first boring dungeon, on top of adding new grapple mechanics and secret rooms to every dungeon. Dragon Quest 11 S shipped with a turbo mode on launch, but the port wasn’t satisfied with that, also adding a full 2D classic play mode to make you want to go back and experience the game in a different way. These games do not ask you to skip their content with fast-forward modes, and instead offer you much more variety in how you experience their content in a way that these “time-saving” features will never really convey.
Playing every game at 2X speed also feels counterproductive to the whole point of JRPGs, at least to me, which is to take the scenic route as much as possible. In my younger days, I was really compelled to linger in the world ofChrono Cross, with its hand-painted backgrounds and ethereal music compositions. I had no qualms about wandering around Digimon World 3, discovering new Digivolutions, and engaging in card battles as often as I could. I can’t remember a JRPG that I absolutely loved because it was over so quickly. Every JRPG I’ve loved, I’ve loved it for its slow pace and intrinsic beauty, and even for the fun grinding adventures I had along the way, like finding the Zodiacs inFinal Fantasy 12or crafting the Ultima Blade inKingdom Hearts.
But now that I see that even modern games are taking up this practice, I feel that it has become a bit too much. It’s like an escape for them. There’s no point in bringing back the turn-based formula if you don’t have anything meaningful to make it worth my time. And the switch to the action genre also feels likeanother easy escapethat many franchises take. I wish more developers would think about how to make us spend more time with their games instead of less, because that’s what makes JRPGs so appealing in the first place.
