Justin: It's time for our second question, which should provide more of a blast from the past: Looking back on the RPGs that have come and gone, each one has a different system of awarding magic or skills. Which do you think did it best, how would you improve it, and why?

Mike: At the risk of opening a vast can of worms, and of sounding like One Of Those People, I sincerely believe FF8 to have one of most formidable systems, at least in mainstream RPGs. My interpretation of it has centered around the idea that junctioning is the pivotal factor, where the work done with the menu screen is the gameplay, and the battles fought, etc simply a test of your configurations. In that light, the Junction/Draw system proves both challenging and innovative (even if the battles do not), two key factors for me in terms of appreciating a battle system. As for improvements, the most glaring area is the method of accumulating the items needed for junctioning: Drawing. It's simply too time-consuming and repetitive

Pierce: Drawing magic was evil. EVIL, I say.

Andrew: I also enjoyed FF8's system, and drawing really wasn't an issue fairly early on as long as you played your cards right, so to speak. You could get things done without too much difficulty. The part that bothered me was finding items on those damnable islands. I've never gotten Lionheart, and I spent hours looking!

Tony: The Absolute perfect system was Grandia's. It was the best battle system ever. Well, except for the Tales and Star Ocean Battle systems. I mean, what better way to stay turn based and STILL add in action?

Pierce: This begs the question, though, do we want a system where everyone can have any skill/magic (a la the latter FFs) or something where certain characters can do certain things and others can't (a la FFIV)?

Mike: That's a huge debate, but one that answers itself: if there are people willing to defend both sides of the static characters vs. customizable characters debate, then there is a market for the existence of both.

Andrew: Yeah, nobody's forcing you to play every game.

Matt: For those that know me well, my answer is a tad predictable, though I can support my belief. I really enjoyed Seiken Densetsu 3's method, that is, that abilities are obtained via a combination of leveling up, class changing, and status raising, but are obtained differently for different characters. For example, Hawke needed to have a high spirit, whereas Angela needed a high magic level. Additionally, the more a spell was used, the less time it would take to cast it in later incantations, which was crucial to the real time battles. Though, to improve I could definitely have seen them increasing the potency of spells as you use them more, instead of just chant time, as well as allowing more than one character level 3 spells.

Mike: I support Matt in his SD3 plight. Half-heartedly, anyway.

Pierce: You could argue the superiority of FFX's Sphere Grid, as it allowed a great deal of customization within the restraints of the grid itself. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was still a solid way to allow players to gear characters more toward what they want.

Andrew: Yeah. The major drawback was how easy it made things towards the end of the game. Even a little bit of leveling resulted in very little difficulty once players got toughened up. It probably would have been better if the experience curve hadn't leveled out once you hit 20000 AP or so.

Justin: What about 6? I figured someone would mention the esper system, or the level-based system of 4, since those seem to be everyone's favorite games, or CT's double and triple techs?

Tony: I say stick with Level Progression

Andrew: Why? Just because you're used to it?

Mike: The level-based system of FF4 simply wouldn't cut it anymore.

Andrew: Levels are all well and good, but really, it was just an arbitrary means of assigning and unlocking abilities, which was basically a result of technical limitations. If you've got the ability to move beyond that, why not do so? That's what made LoD a really weak game, in my eyes. It retained many SNES-era RPG elements that were just played out. Innovation is a part of gaming, and a part of life. People expect something new, and so it's only natural that RPGs would evolve in this respect

Pierce: Final Fantasy VI brings up a good point, though, as it combined the ability to give everyone all magic spells, as well as individuality in terms of who had what skills and so on.

Mike: In FF6, the set abilities/customizable aspects combo worked for the most part, but failed when the thing everyone shared, magic, began to out-power the individual abilities.

Pierce: I've played FFVI through several times and I don't remember my individual skills every being outweighed by shared magic.

Mike: Ultima?

Tony: Once you get Merton and Ultima, you'll never use a regular attack again. Quick is just icing on the cake.

Pierce: Ultima was difficult to obtain, especially if you opted for the Ragnarok sword.

Andrew: And the Gem Box and Economizer...

Pierce: But still, these are spells you don't get until the very end of the game.

Tony: Bolt 2, then? I went through 3/4ths of FF6 with Bolt 2.

Pierce: What about Chrono Cross' system? Chrono Cross was predictable: beat a boss, get your would-be level up, and wait until you beat another boss for another. That made random battles irritating and semi-pointless, though, as there was no growth or experience to be gained from them. I think the SaGa Frontiers worked like that, as well.

Tony: The SaGa Games were definitely geared towards customization. You could do ANYTHING with any character, but every character had their talents. The problem with SaGa was that it was too random.

Pierce: Agreed. That was what stopped me from enjoying the SaGa games I played a great deal.

Justin: I'd like to see more randomness, personally. I think it'd be cool if there was a huge pool of abilities available, but you only saw a few of them in the course of a single playthrough.

Matt: That sounds almost Pokémonish.

Justin: Well, I guess it's safe to say that the ability to determine the course of your character's future has won the argument here, and I think we'll see much more of that as time goes on.