Everything you knew about FFIV is WRONG!

[A Black Falcon]

Oh yes, as far as depth of interaction with the story goes, Torment beats them both.

It was clearly inspired by console RPGs (and I think the designers have admitted as much), but they came from a PC perspective, so it has the PC RPG's options, choices, and nonlinearity in parts, with the console RPG's singular focus on a storyline... the best of both worlds of storytelling, really. :) There really hasn't been anything else like it, before or since... Japanese games mostly just TELL the story, and don't let you interact with it (I know that is not always true... some cases do... just not most.), and American ones often don't have nearly as good a story because nonlinearity and choices forces it (look at how the Baldur's Gate series deals with the fact that the main character could be any race/class/gender type... they had to design things very carefully for it to work...)

I read your post. Basically you have issues with a lack of good strategy in a lot of Japanese RPGs, right? I can see that, but to be honest I've had similar complaints with US RPGs which the ability to move around didn't really eliminate.

That helps a lot, certainly, and I do appreciate those games more... frusteration-removing features (save anywhere, maps, etc) are really nice too, though. Well, strategy from traditional RPGs... you want something different from Star Ocean or a Mana game. :) But anyway, yes, I like strategy, and that's often lacking from console RPGs.

As for US RPGs lacking strategy, what do you mean? I mean, other than obvious action-combat stuff like the TES games (you must remember that I'm not exactly a fan of the Elder Scrolls...), could you be more specific?

The real problem is too many of both sides tend to copy from one of two formulas. Very few actually try to come up with an interesting battle system. Xenogears did to an extent with it's battle combos, and Chrono Cross really did something I was very impressed by.

Some games truly change their genre, but most just follow along... on the PC side though, I'd mention Wizardry I for the genesis, and then Pool of Radiance for adding so much more strategic depth... the '90s get harder, though I'd have to mention Baldur's Gate of course. Took the style pioneered by Pool of Radiance and ran with it... a truly genre-redefining game (though the previous year's Fallout also deserves great accolades and was innovative in many ways, it wasn't as noticed and is only a single-character game, not party-based) But anyway... Torment's battle system? Standard Baldur's Gate engine combat, with a close-combat focus due to the close in camera. Nothing really special, and it never gets really hard. But that's fine, because as I've said before, that's the most combat-deemphasized RPG I've ever seen... it truly does innovate in its combat system by giving you so many ways to not use it. :)

For the most part good RPGs definitely have something that keeps you interested in the combat, though... whether it's the old-school challenging simplicity of Wizardry VI (a game that is both great and imposingly hard to play...) or the tactical-strategy depth of a Fallout (turn-based, single character combat... not the deepest ever, but it works well, flows, and never feels dull) or Baldur's Gate (perfect way to keep the game moving while allowing full control over the game...)...

Oh yeah, this is where I talk about KotOR and how it had some flaws. But I've done that before so I won't again. :)

I suppose when you get down to it, a "genre" is just hard to really truly innovate in while staying within some cultural boundry of what you think will keep it in that genre.

Yes, this is definitely true.