The growing trend in console RPG's...
 

Cards. More and more of them seem to have ditched the traditional styles for, well, card games. Baten Kaitos comes to mind as the most recent I've seen, but Phanstasy Star Online Ep3, as well as Lost Kingdoms, at least on the GameCube side, have gone this way. What are your thoughts on this?

To me, card games have always been (and probably always will be) the domain of 10 year olds and hardcore geeks. Baten Kaitos looked interesting, until I found out that all your commands are determined through what order you arrange your deck. That just threw me off. Call me old fashioned, but I don't see any gameplay benefits in card systems.

The only card system that works is the one that uses four suits, 52 cards, and poker chips.

Indeed. I'd much rather spend time considering what armour to wear and what weapons to use than re-organise a deck.

A good way to kill time if you're utterly bored and have nothing to do, but overall, I think they're boring.

I guess they'd be okay as side games if you're into that kind of thing. Perhaps card games are a big thing in Japan and with younger players (like Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh!), but it's kinda odd to assume everyone wants to play it (the way they integrate it into the game and make a big deal of it).

I know a lot of RPG freaks, but I don't know a single one who enjoys the card games OR the Blitzball side game in the FF series.

The side games they DID love was in FF7 with the Chocobo Racing, but once you got the Ultimate Choco, there wasn't much point in doing it again.

[edit]
Dragon Warrior 4 had a casino with Video Poker.. I was so addicted to that, but you also got the best items in the game from there. Metal Babble shield was like 60,000 some chips :eek: , but damn it was kickass.

Ugh. Utterly, and completely boring. I know there are people who get all hot and sweaty organizing deck after deck of cards, and I'm sure there's a mountain of strategy involved in it, however, I would much rather equip a good sword, and attack the enemy myself. Instead, you have to summon creature after creature to do the fighting for you, while you run around like a chicken trying to avoid the enemy's attacks (I'm thinking of Lost Kingdoms. Don't know too much about the others).

who would design such boring games.

I enjoyed the card game in FF8(the one in FF9 sucks though). Blitzball is pretty fun compared to those annoying lightning/chocobo minigame.

The way Baten Kaitos works is this: you get a hand dealt out to you at the start of the battle, then you select ONE (1) action do. That's either use an attack card, or heal, or a magic card. Unless you actually spend time organising your deck before the battle the order is what you've picked up last. So if you've fought ten small battles and found ten sword cards, you're trapped attacking until you manage to draw something else. God help you if you need to heal, or something.

I like the card games. :'(

I was really disappointed when I heard that PSO III was a card battle game. Why change one of the most popular online games to a totally different battle system.

Insane!!

I enjoyed Lost Kingdoms. Play it before you whine about it, it's a decent game.

I'm not knocking the game quality, I'm just pissed because card games are (and probably always will be) hardcore geek material. That and arranging decks is just lame. Generally, the quality of the games if fine (Baten Kaitos is said to be the best looking RPG ever), but if you can't stand the gameplay there's no point buying it.

I guess the game companies have some guy whose thing is "card games" and they have to give him work... so he slips the card games into rpgs. Hopefully, they don't higher anymore of these guys and have to put card games in FPS...

As long as it's not an rpg focusing around a card game and the card game is entirely optional, I don't mind it because I don't play it.

Well, the reason card trend has stepped up is that Japan has finally bought into the card collecting phenomenom. Now that card collecting is so mainstream, a lot of parents in japan have realized collecting cards cost a lot of money and even more importantly, takes up a lot of space (believe me, SPACE is always the biggest concern for japanese parents). So making card games into Video game is a perfect soluction.

What do you mean just catching on? Japan has been trading cards for years. People have been making card-based games for years, just not mainstream ones.

I liked the card game in FF9... i played it a lot to waste time after leveling for hours

The only game that had cards that I liked was Ogre Battle ;)