2009: The Year of the Old-School RPG
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It's no coincidence that Demon's Souls in many ways resembles a traditional roguelike. The genre's revival on handheld systems (along with first-person dungeon crawlers) encompass many of the most difficult RPGs of recent years. Demon's Souls is an old-school dungeon crawler in every sense of the world, demanding patience and skill to complete.
Dragon Age: Origins is another RPG that is actually much harder than it looks. Unlike the more action-oriented Mass Effect, it's a point-and-click RPG in the best tradition of Baldur's Gate. In fact, it contains numerous references to those classic games, with phrases like "Gather your party and venture forth?" and exhortations to "go for the eyes" guaranteed to warm the hearts of old RPG fans. No surprise given that it's basically the spiritual successor to that series.
By comparison, the biggest RPGs of 2008 seemed more determined to advance the genre. Fallout 3 and Fable II were both designed to perfect the new ideas put forth by their predecessors (I consider Oblivion a spiritual predecessor to Fallout 3) in creating a massive world for players to explore. Meanwhile, two of the best Japanese RPGs of the year were highly experimental. Valkyria Chronicles brought a number of fascinating innovations to strategy RPGs, and The World Ends With You did the same for more traditional JRPGs with its unique brand of scaleable difficulty.
