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A good job system can make an otherwise mediocre RPG really fun.
It allows for the gamer to customize their party to their liking. Do
you prefer melee to magic? Then make your team damage-heavy. Are you
a sucker for those powerful magic spells? Then create a mage party
and cast away. Most RPGs with job systems give you tons of options
for customization, so how could they go wrong? You are given free
range to create a party fine tuned to your specific tastes, nothing
could ruin this. Or could it?
Things are going great. Your melee centered team is plowing
through everything. The one mage-type character that you have is
something light on magic like a Red Mage or something like that, but
you don't need anything more. The game gives you the power to create
a team that you, the player, want. Well, that is until your
sword-wielding, armor-toting group of adventurers find themselves in
a wicked cavern that requires magic or your mage-heavy team wonders
into a tower of monsters resistant to magic. Suddenly, you are
forced to create a party based on what the game thinks you should
have. Somehow your customization just seems a little less free. Gone
is your party of characters with unique jobs; stop and say hello to
your cookie cutter classes. I hate being given a ton of choices and
then being forced to focus on certain ones. Let me do what I
want.
I just don't fully understand the point of forcing gamers to play
certain roles while still giving them the illusion of a choice. Not
all RPGs with a job system do this, but those that do seem to hinder
customization. Along with requiring certain jobs, I also hate when
certain jobs are made dependent upon another job. Just look at Final
Fantasy V or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and tell me that a Blue
Mage doesn't rely on a Beastmaster. It's just frustrating. There is
also the aspect of horrible jobs. A game is crammed with so many
jobs that about half of them are next to useless. I'm not even going
to get into the whole aspect of required jobs in MMORPGs, because
that could be a completely new editorial all on its own. I'm not
knocking RPGs with job systems. I actually really love them, but I
just don't like to be told that I have complete freedom to customize
only to be locked into pairing a desired job with an undesired one,
forced to use a specific job type at a certain point in the game, or
having a job that serves no purpose at all. |
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