It wasn't made before -- it was a prequel. It was made after the fact to detail the story leading up to the first.

There are plenty of good RPG's for consoles. Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Lufia for the SNES. Zelda for the 64. FF for the playstation and SNES (The first FF games were for SNES)

I see what you are saying, but role-playing is a broader term than you choose to realize. In a strict sense it could apply only to pen and paper RPGs, or it could be stretched to mean any game where you play the role of an in-game character. Some games may be far from your definition of role-playing, but they are still considered by many to be RPGs.

[edit]:
You might not mean it this way, but you make it sound like any game with killing monsters and gaining experience is not an rpg. What games do you consider to be RPGs?

I've seen screenshots of lufia 1 and have lufia 2 and lufia 2 looks much better, especially in the battle system. I think your mistaken unless they gave it a major touchup before they released it. By the way, do you fight Arek in lufia 1? I really want to smash in that bony face.

Building stuff and finding unique stuff. Possibly building unique stuff.

The rest is incidental.

Its hard to say which was made first. Mainly since the end of the Prequal isnt written in a story or intro movie. Its actually a interactive part of the game where you play as the characters from Lufia 2, and defeate the final badguy in Lufia 2 (The Prequal).
-DogMan

Nadrew wrote:

Actually Lufia 2 was programmed years before Lufia, it was actually going to be the first one, but the team decided to go for a prequel.

I don't know the ordering of the games but I know that they were both made by different companies. Lufia 1 was made by Taito and Lufia 2 was made by Natsume. And since you play out the end of Lufia 2 in Lufia 1 it leads me to believe that Lufia 1 was made first and then Natsume bought the rights to make Lufia 2. That and the copywrite date on Lufia 1 is 1993 and Lufia 2 is 1996.

This isnt true. Just because you switch between characters, or control multiple characters actions doesnt mean your not role-playing.

You are role-playing. That's singular not plural. To role-play implies one role.

To role play you have to have a character with no personality and no preference to anything.

That isnt true either. I could role-play a Cowboy if I wanted to. Thus I would start off with the personality and preferances of a cowboy.

Yep in a role-playing game you could play a cowboy. Try doing that in FF7. You can't because it restricts you to the role it set up, so you aren't playing the role. The game has complete control over the character and you have none, which means you aren't role playing. Since the word play implies that you have some sort of rules and a score system either numberic or descriptive.

So in short if you don't control the role of your character you're not roleplaying the game is.

This is the touchy part. If dont control the destiny of the character, is it truely role-playing? It comes down to your definition of the word 'role-playing'.

You don't have to be able to control the destiny of the character just thier actions. It's up to the rules of the system or DM whether or not you are successful at what you are doing.

A little kids might be, 'Pretending to be GIJoe'. Which would mean that he would have to do what GIJoe would do, reguardless of weather or not he thought it was the best thing to do.

If the kid chose to pretend like GIJoe then the kid could but the kid is in no way restricted in his actions unlike in a story driven "RPG".

Just because you cant control Cloud's choices in FF7 doesnt mean that your not pretending to be him (Playing the Role of Cloud).

You can pretend you are there but you aren't role-playing since you aren't in control. These are two diferent things. To role-play implies you have control over the role you are playing or you aren't playing. It's more like role-watching or role-viewing but not roleplaying.

I think for a lot of people they see Role Playing as creating your own Role to play, not playing the role of someone else.

I don't know about a lot of people. Too many people have been playing and worshiping the spam that is released yearly by Square. The first Final Fantasy was the best in the series and it only got worse from there.

Just because its not your style of game doesnt make it bad. Even I'll admit Yoshi Story is a decent game, even though I may hate it.

Nope I don't like sports games but that doesn't make them bad, but I have my reasons for the Final Fantasy series.

The Final Fantasy games don't have much gameplay in them which makes themnot much of a game. Cut scenes are not game play. Scrolling through dialog is not gameplay. Watching long summons and magic spells are not gameplay. Basically any time you aren't actually doing something it isn't gameplay. So strip all dialog that doesn't tell you do what to do next, all cutscenes, all battle animations down to the basic how much damage is done, and any other time you just watch the screen. Then all you have left is combat, inventory management, and (in the earlier ones) exploration. This is why I liked FF1 the best since there was little time you weren't playing the game and the combat was much more challanging in FF1. The later games just watered down the actual gameplay and embelished all the things like cutscenes, dialog, and long animations which didn't contribute to the gameplay.

Also, there has to be some reason why Square are on top. They wouldnt be where they are if they didnt do something right would they?

Sometimes if you do the right things at the right times you just get lucky. Square just managed to get a good following and name early on and they're still riding on it.

Sad endings are especially good when they really hurt -- for example, when Ripley jumped off of the ledge into a pool of acid. No one could've seen that one coming.