Whose Faulty Vision

RPG Eras

I’m kind of amused that on my PSP, I’m playing a game that looks like this:

And at the same time, playing a game on my PS3 that looks like this (click on the thumbnails for full-sized images; WordPress won’t let me change the thumbnail size, so they’re too teensy to show how incredible they look):

The difference in gameplay is as extreme as the difference in graphics–Oblivion is incredibly freeform, letting me define my character however I want and go and do whatever I want, whereas Phantasy Star II is utterly linear. Which isn’t to say that Phantasy Star II is a bad game–it’s just very much of its era, and it’s incredible how much computer RPGs have evolved since then.